


Dean Winchester Is a Puzzle, Wrapped in an Enigma, Inside a Taco

by cr0wgrrl



Series: Outtakes & Extras for ZoyciteM's "Sammy's Time at Stanford" [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: BAMF Dean, BAMF Henrik, Case Fic, Castiel and Jimmy Novak Are Twins, Dean Has Self-Esteem Issues, Dean Has Self-Worth Issues, Dean-Centric, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Ghosts, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Henrik, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Most of the relationships are backstory/off-screen here, POV Original Character, Polyamory, Protective Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester at Stanford, Stanford Era, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-06-02 21:10:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6582562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cr0wgrrl/pseuds/cr0wgrrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henrik has a large bag of rock salt in one hand, an iron poker in the other, and a headache the size of the jet on which his charges and their boyfriend left for Chicago six hours ago... All compliments of Dean Winchester.</p>
<p>[Read this after Chapter 26 of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5661583">Sammy's Time at Stanford</a>.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Puzzling Mr. Winchester

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZoyciteM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoyciteM/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Sammy's Time at Stanford](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5661583) by [ZoyciteM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoyciteM/pseuds/ZoyciteM). 



> This falls between Chapter 19 and Chapter 27 of ZoyciteM's "Sammy's Time at Stanford", and ironically has very little to do with Sammy or Stanford, and everything to do with Dean. But since Sam has always been everything to Dean, it probably has something to do with Sammy, too.

Henrik has worked for the Novaks for more than 20 years.

He and his team have protected the family through no less than seventeen different attempts at corporate espionage, eight unsuccessful blackmail attempts, two thwarted home invasions, four would-be muggings, and one almost successful kidnapping, after which James and Castiel had become his primary assignment.

He knows ten different ways to disarm an opponent (sixteen in theory, but only ten that he has ever had to put into practice), twenty different pressure points to incapacitate an attacker, and three places to stab someone that will kill them in under a minute.

Four days ago, he would not have considered it bragging to say he was the unequivocal expert at predicting and preventing threats to his charges.

Now… now he has a large bag of rock salt in one hand, an iron poker in the other, and a headache the size of the jet on which his charges and their boyfriend left for Chicago six hours ago.

All compliments of Dean Winchester.

~*~

The headache begins mid-morning four days previously, not coincidentally exactly when Marta first opens the door at the enigmatic Mr. Winchester's knock.

"Hey there, I'm looking for Jimmy and Cas? This is the address they gave, but–" The young man at the door has short-cropped blonde hair, green eyes and a deceptively sunny smile that belies the tightness around his mouth and eyes. He's got a battered leather jacket on despite the heat, and a stained, well-worn duffel slung over his left arm.

Outside of the low-end wardrobe, he doesn't much resemble his brother, Henrik thinks, except maybe in the guarded look in his eyes. Of the two, this one is shorter, older, more muscled, and more obviously dangerous, given the faint smell of gunpowder that wafts in around him with the breeze.

He wonders absently exactly how many strays the twins are planning to take in.

Marta smiles. "Dean? Come in, we've been expecting you. Both Castiel and James are at the university right now, but they told us you'd be arriving today."

Dean looks relieved. "Cool – 's it okay if I wait here for them, then?" He looks around the foyer wide-eyed. "Man, this place is awesome. Hey, is Sammy around?"

Marta shakes her head. "He's at university too, I'm afraid, but please come in. They said you might be tired, so we've gone ahead and set your room up. They also mentioned that you… might need medical assistance?"

Dean nods tightly, swaying a little bit on his feet. "Yeah, got in a bar fight with a guy an' his pit bull. I don't need a doctor, though, Sammy's just a mother hen. 's all stitched up already, nothing to worry about. I'm just tired – drove all night to get here."

Marta beckons Dean inside. Henrik watches as she spots the same half-scrubbed but still crusted blood stain on the man's leather jacket that he has. Her scandalized huff tells him she's already calculating what she'll need to get the blood out. Dirt and stains are an affront to her existence.

Dean's brash exterior cracks momentarily as he tracks her gaze to the blood. "Does it help to know the other guy started it?" he asks with a small smirk, but his eyes look embarrassed, like he knows how unwelcome it should be for a man who gets into bar fights to be standing in a house like this in worn jeans, scuffed boots and a bloodied jacket.

His grin fades into discomfort. "Look, I don't wanna put you to any trouble." He shrugs, favoring his right side slightly. "Why don't I come back later when the guys are here–"

"Nonsense," Marta says kindly. "You're _expected_." She reaches up to help him out of his jacket – "Let me take this for you." Henrik half expects him to refuse, but he actually looks a little grateful, wincing as she eases the coat off… and gasps. Hidden by his coat, a bright red patch spreads across the shoulder of his light-blue t-shirt.

"Huh." Dean looks down at the stain and frowns, like Wile E. Coyote realizing he is standing in mid-air. And then his eyes roll up and he lists sideways, bag sliding off his shoulder to clank on the hardwood floor.

Since when do duffels go _clank_? Henrik wonders as he catches their guest before Dean can follow his bag to the ground.

~*~

Henrik has always believed that Marta is one of the best additions the Novaks ever made to their household. House steward, chef, and housekeeper all in one, when needed she is an undefeatable, indefatigable force of nature under the frantically waving banner of hospitality.

At the young Mr. Winchester's collapse, she springs into action with such focused efficiency that one might think having a stranger pass out in the foyer was an everyday occurrence for her. _(Please, don't let it become an everyday occurrence,_ Henrik prays.)

As Henrik carries Dean through the house and up the stairs, Marta scurries around him in a flurry of activity, phone to her ear. The doctor was scheduled for this afternoon, but is happy to move up his schedule and take a later lunch. It's amazing how fast you can arrange a house call with the Novak name behind you.

By the time Henrik reaches Dean's room, Marta has covered his bed with a tarp to keep any blood off the mattress, and covered the tarp with a sheet to keep their guest comfortable. Dr. Joules, Marta says, would like Henrik to assess the patient's condition, and please speak clearly as the phone is now on speakerphone.

After laying Dean on the bed, Henrik starts at his crown and works his way down. "Breathing is normal but shallow. Skin is pale. Pulse is a little weak, but acceptable. Lump on the back of the head – possible concussion." He lifts up Dean's eyelids. "Pupils are slightly dilated. Cognitive function was good on arrival, however; speech was clear and not slurred."

The man is still out – probably not for too much longer, just blood loss and overexertion temporarily overtaxing his system, but it's still a godsend for Henrik. Unconscious patients can't try to hide or minimize their injuries.

Or complain about being patted down for weapons.

Henrik removes the loaded Taurus from the small of Dean's back and hands it carefully, barrel down, to Marta. This is followed by a switchblade and a boot knife, and a pair of brass – er, silver? – knuckles. She trades the lot for a pair of scissors, point side equally carefully turned down. _Safety_ first. Henrik hopes the man isn't attached to his shirt as he cuts it off of him.

"Four wounds across the shoulder, looks like claw marks, size large," Henrik says, using the towel Marta hands him to apply pressure where the wounds are bleeding. "Field dressed, but some of the stitches have burst." He eyes the lines of red at the edges of the wounds. "Signs of possible infection. Now elevating his shoulder and applying pressure to try to stop the bleeding."

Marta stows the weapons safely inside one of the dresser drawers, then fetches three pillows and a towel. When Henrik lifts Dean's torso to check his back for injuries, she swiftly stuffs the pillows under him to elevate his chest, and the towel over the pillows, of course, in case of more bleeding.

"No sign of damage to the spine or back." He nods at Marta, who takes over maintaining the pressure as he inspects the rest of Dean's torso. "Extensive chest and abdominal bruising, possible internal damage, possible fractured ribs, right side. Left side clear." Then he gently slides Dean's boots, socks and jeans off so he can check his legs and lower torso. "Minimal bruising on lower extremities. Good nerve reactivity. Color of extremities good. No signs of obvious motor impairment."

Henrik fails to list off all the non-life-threatening causes for alarm that he's observed, none of which belong on a man only a few years older than James or Castiel: the obviously old small circular burns he finds in small clusters on Dean's thigh, chest and arms, the humanoid bite mark across the back of one calf, the raised scar on his back, or the two clearly identifiable well-healed gunshot scars, one in his left shoulder and one in his right thigh.

He does, however, grimly file the information away for further investigation.

With a nod, Henrik switches places with Marta, who takes her phone off speaker mode to confirms the final arrangements. Then she drops the phone back into her pocket and extracts a fluffy red-and-black striped blanket from the hall closet, covering the young man as much as she can.

Henrik checks the towel again, and is pleased to see the bleeding has stopped. He maintains the pressure as a precaution while Marta efficiently empties Dean's jeans and jacket onto the nightstand, then bundles up all his clothing, including the shredded t-shirt.

"The doctor says we're to look out for shock and keep him laying down until he gets here." Marta brushes the young man's hair back from his face. "He's not to eat or drink anything, including medicine, until after he's been seen. I'll gather up a light afternoon tea for when the doctor's done and get started on these–" she grimaces at Dean's clothing– "although it might be kinder to just burn them. Did you notice how skinny he is? I'll have my hands full!"

And with that, the unstoppable force of hospitality bustles her way out of the room.

And then it's just Henrik and the unconscious Dean Winchester.

~*~

Henrik keeps one eye on their guest as he turns the majority of his attention to finding out everything he can about the man who showed up at his door with a wound no pit bull ever made. It's Henrik's job to be suspicious, and he has never once felt guilty for being good at his job. Part of what makes him an excellent bodyguard are his instincts, and those instincts are saying that no stranger who shows up injured at your door ever tells you the whole truth.

Just _once_ , he'd like his instincts to be wrong.

The niggling ache behind his eyes turns into a persistent throbbing when his cursory check of Dean's wallet reveals four driver's licenses (Dean Winchester, James Hetfield, Nigel Tufnel, Jerry Wanek), two different credit cards (Hector Aframian, David Berkowitz), $23 in cash, and miscellaneous gas station and hotel receipts across five states in the past four weeks. There's also a picture of a blonde woman with two small boys and a very expired, well-worn library card for Sam Winchester with a smiling teen boy's face on it.

The pile of things Marta emptied onto the nightstand includes: a ranger's badge for one Samuel Cole; a whiskey flask with water in it; a set of car keys; half a pack of gum; $3.74 in change; a sheathed silver knife with an engraved ivory or bone handle; two Trojans; an almost-out-of-battery cell phone with cracks spider-webbing across its screen; a pair of bobby pins and a safety pin; and two used shotgun shells with some kind of salty residue around them.

Last but not least, there's the duffel bag, packed into a primitive form of sedimentary strata.

The top layer consists mainly of clothes of the Goodwill and Walmart variety, as well as a bottle of aspirin and an unlabeled orange bottle of what appear to be antibiotics. The bottom layer contains a few magazines of the variety that do not even _pretend_ to be read for their articles, an opened box of condoms and a bottle of lube and, entirely out of place in the duffel, a pair of [ruffled light blue panties](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5661583/chapters/13637334) of high craftsmanship and quality, in, er… _well-appreciated_ condition.

In between these two layers, well-wrapped inside a few flannel shirts, are yet another silver knife and an ornate Bowie knife, a short iron pipe, a half-full canister of salt, a mostly empty bottle of Jack Daniels, a cassette tape player that has been curiously modified, and a full clip of bullets. The bullets, he notices in passing, are custom-made. If he didn't know better, he'd say they were silver.

Feeling like he has stepped into a game of _Clue_ , Henrik retrieves the Taurus and empties it, then places it, the pipe and the knives back in the dresser. The ammo goes into the nightstand drawer. He's not interested in fully disarming Dean – experience with violent men has taught him that they often become more unstable when stripped of their ability to defend themselves. Besides, he would be overstepping his authority to do so without provocation. The man may well be a serial killer, but he is _still_ a guest of the house.

Henrik snaps shots of the licenses, IDs and credit cards to run later, as well as Dean's tattoo. He hadn't thought much of Sam's matching tattoo when the Novaks asked him to have him checked out, but in light of everything else, it's a useful identifying mark for a man with so many fake identities.

He carefully puts everything back in the wallet and sits down on the bed, rubbing his head. The background check on the younger Winchester had turned up relatively clean and uneventful. How on _earth_ , he thinks frustratedly, did he miss all _this_?

~*~

As predicted, Dean wakes back up before the doctor arrives. At first he is groggy and confused, but it's clear he's no stranger to blood loss or unexpected situations. Green eyes flicker around the room, taking in his environment. Then his shoulders relax and he leans back again.

"I gotta say, you move fast." He smirks. "I usually like to know a guy's name before I wake up naked in his bed, you know, but I can make an exception because this bed is freakin' _awesome_."

"Excellent." Marta bustles by Henrik before he can respond. "Then you won't mind staying in it until the doctor can look you over, so you won't rip any more stitches."

Dean laughs, sinking back into the pillows. "Are you kidding? This thing is so comfortable, you're gonna have to pry me outta it."

Marta smiles. "That's good – especially considering that this is _your_ room now. If you didn't like the bed, we would have had to go out and find another one for you. I'm Marta, by the way, and he's Henrik."

The man looks stunned at her pronouncement. "Excuse me, I think I misheard you, could you repeat that thing about the bed?"

He's not dissembling, Henrik is certain, which is a point in his favor. If he were in fact cultivating the Novaks for their money, he'd have most likely looked satisfied with Marta's statement, possibly even smug or just blasé. But Dean mainly looks bewildered and suspicious, although he covers it up quickly.

"The boys," Marta explains, "When they told me you'd be coming today, they said you'd be needing the room on a permanent basis, to stay in whenever you'd be visiting."

Dean opens his mouth, but whatever he was going to say is cut off by a pointed look from Marta. "And that we _weren't_ to let you argue about it."

He looks to Henrik at that. Henrik just shrugs, the shrug of a man who learned long ago that some fights are just not worth fighting, and that this is most likely one of them.

"We do apologize for the, you know," Marta continues, nodding at the covers. "But it was necessary so we could tell the doctor the severity of your injuries." She smiles cheekily. "Don't worry, Henrik made sure to protect your dignity."

Henrik decides to take pity on the man and derails that conversation with a jingle of Dean's keys. "Castiel also mentioned that you would need parking. With your permission, I'll move your car into our garage, assuming it's nearby."

Dean deliberates silently over the offer with the look of a man at war with himself, and another piece of the puzzle slides into place for Henrik. Dean didn't care about the belongings piled on the nightstand, or about his obviously opened duffel on the floor. But the car – _that_ he cares enough about to be uncomfortable entrusting it to the hands of another, but also enough about to want to prefer to see her in a garage rather than the street.

Pragmatism wins out – or possibly the glare Marta gives him when he tries to sit up – and he nods. "Alright, I'm trusting you to treat her well. She's the black Chevy out front, you can't miss her."

Henrik nods and exits, pocketing the keys.

A lesser experienced bodyguard would wonder why he wasn't sticking around to eavesdrop on Dean's conversation with Marta. But Henrik doesn't need to. He's got enough information to feel confident the man isn't an immediate threat. Yes, there's a lot more to find out before he can make a final assessment, but there are much more efficient ways to gather that intel than standing around.

And besides, it's not like he can't listen in on any conversation over the sound-activated microphone he installed in the room right after the twins informed him of Dean's impending arrival.

The car is a classic, and much more interesting than the conversation Dean hears over the microphone, which never strays from polite small talk. It's definitely a gas guzzler, and for a moment he wonders how a man Dean's age with no visible source of income can afford to keep it running.

Then he remembers the two credit cards. The headache returns again.

He only does a cursory check of the car, dutifully snapping shots of the registration and insurance papers in the glovebox, both of which to his surprise actually have Dean's real name on them, not that that means they're real. The cassette tapes in the car are a surprise, both that anyone still uses them and that they still work. He takes a few pictures of them, for handwriting comparison.

Overall, Henrik notes approvingly, the interior of the car is clean and tidy. The floor is obviously vacuumed regularly, and the leather is clean and well cared for.

You can judge a lot about a person by the way they treat the things they love.

At first glance, the trunk is as tidy as the rest of the car – just a bag of dirty clothes and a folded up throw rug. At second glance… at second glance, Henrik notices the false bottom and lifts it. Then his throbbing ache of a headache returns full force and the little muscle over his right eye starts twitching uncontrollably as he mentally upgrades, Dean from _potential serial killer_ to _potentially schizophrenic serial killer with religious delusions who is still inexplicably a guest in this house._

"-rst time I've ever had a room of my own since I was four, can you believe that?" Henrik is ashamed at having almost tuned out the conversation over the microphone.

"Really?" Marta asks. "That sounds like it would be difficult."

There's a pause, then, "Yeah, it wasn't always easy. My dad was a… bounty hunter kinda guy, so we moved round all over the place. 's kinda the family business, me an' him."

Henrik looks under the false bottom of the trunk a second time. He's pretty sure bounty hunters don't use wooden stakes, curved sickles or shuriken… or carry neat packets of herbs labeled "sage" and "belladonna" and "goofer dust."

"Sammy got out, though," Dean says over the mic, voice full of pride. "Full ride to Stanford an' everything. He's the smart one in the family, too smart for the biz."

Henrik snaps shots of the sigils on the underside of the trunk – they're his biggest concern, actually; violence is predictable, religious delusions less so. Then he locks the car up to head back upstairs… and thinks better. He goes to his own room instead, unwraps a small square of putty from his top right desk drawer, and presses the key firmly into it. Holds the pressure as he counts to 30.

Over the microphone, Dean sighs. "Look, I know you or the big guy emptied out all my stuff, and, uh–" his voice catches. "I know all this has gotta look squirrelly, but I swear, if I thought for a minute me being here was gonna hurt Sam or his boyfriends, I never woulda walked up to your door. I sure didn't mean to all but pass out on you, either."

Henrik carefully peels the key out of the putty, pleased with the clear imprint, and scrapes the key clean of any evidence. One never knows when an extra key might come in handy.

Over Henrik's wire, Dean barrels forward over Marta's polite words of dissuasion. "If you or him decide I'm not someone your guys should be associating with… just tell me and I'm gone, just like that. I can take it." He laughs self-deprecatingly. "Just don't kick Sammy out 'cause of me. He's a good kid."

~*~

The conversation between Dean and the doctor is disappointingly boring. Henrik listens in while he runs the Impala's plates through the federal database. Other than hearing a catalog of Dean's injuries, the only interesting fact that emerges is that the doctor is just as skeptical about the source of the damage.

"Mr. Winchester, forgive my curiosity, but how big did you say this dog was? Even on its hind legs, the placement, depth and angle of these wounds indicates a very large animal."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, uh…" Dean hedges.

Henrik is pleasantly surprised to see that the primary violations attached to the large black car they are harboring in their garage are parking tickets, of which there are many, spread out across an impressive number of states, and moving violations, of which there are only a few. Many are years overdue, and not all in Dean's name, but still – easily resolved. Money can _(and does, he thinks with no small satisfaction as the list grows smaller with each click)_ make them all go away. DUIs or hit-and-runs, or god forbid anything worse, would have been much harder to deal with.

Over the mic, Dean coughs. "…well, I gotta be honest, doc, uh, it wasn't _quite_ a pit bull. I kinda played it down – didn't wanna worry anyone. It was, uh, probably closer to, I dunno, a Great Dane in size, maybe? Or… maybe more like a wolf-y kind of thing. But hey, no bites, right? Otherwise it woulda been a whole different story."

By the time the doctor has finished repairing Dean's shoulder, Henrik has finished repairing Dean's driving record and registered the car properly in Palo Alto. He'll need to get one of his team to look up any potential _wanted in connection with_ charges from the police department, but at least now James and Castiel will not be in danger of being pulled over by police for something so easily preventable. Henrik will pick up the new tags tomorrow; the license plate has been expedited, but will nonetheless take longer – he's not a miracle worker.

Dean ends up with 132 stitches, a shot of heavy-duty broad-spectrum antibiotics, and two bottles of amoxicillin and oxycodone, along with a warning to not even think about doing anything more taxing than walking from his bed to the couch for the next few days. Four vials of blood are drawn. He is pronounced lightly concussed with two cracked ribs that should heal on their own and should be treated with ice to bring the swelling down, and lectured about getting more iron in his diet and watching his blood sugar while his body replenishes itself.

Then the doctor clears his throat and politely says, "Now, Mr. Winchester, with your permission, it has been suggested that it would be helpful for me to test against any misfortunate conditions you may have contracted in your personal life. If you would be so kind as to remove your boxers–" at which point Henrik stops listening in on the mic.

There is such a thing as a right to privacy, after all.

~*~

Henrik returns the keys to Dean as soon as the doctor leaves, with a promise to give him the tour after he's had a chance to eat and rest. He leaves Marta hovering over their guest with a rich meaty broth soup, fresh bread and hot chocolate "instead of coffee because what you need to do right now is take it easy." To her approval, he devours it with gusto, virtually inhaling it while deflecting questions about his life by bragging about his brother.

Like he said, you can judge a lot about a person by the way they treat the things they love.

It's clear that as far as Marta is concerned, Dean is welcome in the house, serial killer or not. She's been bored just cooking for the staff with no one to fuss over. Between his injuries, his meager belongings, and the fact that he's probably at least 15 pounds underweight, he's a natural target for her motherly inclinations. When Castiel and James move their boyfriend in, she'll be happier still.

Dean yawns and begs off from the conversation when the food is gone, but something tells Henrik to keep listening. Mostly it's the sound of the man moving about – drawers opening and shutting (a muttered "huh" when the one with the ammo clinks open, but he leaves it where it is, which is interesting), and the sound of something like sand rattling down against wood.

About 15 minutes later, though, Henrik's intuition pays off when Dean makes a phone call.

"Hey, Bobby! Just checkin' in … 'Course I made it! What, you had doubts? … Yeah, okay, I deserved that. … Hey, I'm a big enough man to admit when I'm wrong, so I'm just gonna say it, you were totally right, there were four."

Henrik feel the vein above his left eye begin to throb as he scrawls _"_ _Bobby?"_ and _"_ _four ???"_ on his notepad.

"Yeah, of _course_ that was all of 'em … Fuck, Bobby, you _really_ think I'd walk away with th' job half done?" _*yawn*_ "Sorry, man, the painkillers are makin' me a little loopy. … What? No, man, I'm fine. It's nothing. … Yeah, no, we all made it. Phillips is pretty green, though. I'd keep him on salt-and-burns until he gets some more experience under his belt. Dude froze up in the middle of the fight, nearly got his throat slashed. If I hadn't pushed him outta the way, man–"

Henrik adds _"Phillips"_ to the list, then frowns and adds _"_ _salt/burns"_? It's obviously some kind of code or shorthand, although he can't think of anything offhand. He taps and adds _"wolf"_ from the conversation with the doctor earlier.

"…Me?" Dean coughs. "No, I'm fine, like I said. … Well, okay, not _fine_ -fine. I got a little banged up before Duncan shot the last fucker."

There's the sound of shifting cloth – probably from raising his arm – and Dean hisses. "…Okay, a _lot_ banged up, but I'm all right. Good as new in a week or two, just some stitches, maybe a bruised rib or two. … Yeah, I got a place to heal up at, I'll be good, okay? Just … just a little goofy from the pain pills the doc gave me. … No, not a hospital, just a doc that a guy I know knows… 'sall good, I promise. Don't be too hard on Phillips. He's a good kid. I was like that on my first hunt, too. 'course, I was 14 at the time and he's 22, but we also know I'm awesome… Anyway, we stopped 'em, right? Tucson's safe, that's what matters."

_"Duncan_ ," _"gunshots," "_ _Tucson"_ and " _hunt?"_ join the list. So far, Tucson's probably the only clue of any use. With luck, one of his team can find out how and where Dean used his credit cards down there.

Another pause. "Honestly? Probably not for a week or two unless – hey, no, if it's an emergency, you fuckin' call, okay? Anyway, I got a side project to keep me busy for a bit in the meantime, could use your advice on. Say I wanted to need to take care of a house long-term, maybe even permanent, what am I lookin' at having to do? … No, I can't just paint stuff on the wall, think fuckin' subtle, you know, like for regular folks … Whaddaya mean, what's it for? I gotta have a reason? … Look, if I'm gonna be sitting around on my ass, I might as well be useful. … uh-huh … uh-huh … Latin or Greek? … ok, yeah. Hey, you think of anything else, email me, alright? … You too, old man."

~*~

Dean gets five hours of uninterrupted, oxycodone-assisted sleep after he hangs up.

Henrik gets a headache.

Between the credit card in Dean's name and the specialty box from Mr. S Leather in San Francisco, both of which are express couriered to the house early that afternoon, it's clear that Castiel and James are set on keeping the man around regardless of Henrik's opinion. Yes, he could present the evidence he's gathered to the Novaks senior, but turning Dean away would definitely hurt, possibly even fracture Castiel and James's relationship with Sam, and the boys would never forgive him.

And _this_ is why he will be glad when his charges move to the house. Henrik's job is to not only to protect them from threats but to prevent things from _becoming_ threats, and he cannot _do_ that if they insist on behaving impulsively and making rash decisions.

But there's more than one way to protect them, and fixing Dean's driving record is the tip of that particular iceberg. Henrik has authorization to spend whatever money is necessary to do his job and a team of people he trusts to spend it on.

He sets his contact Jason in Detroit to tracking down all the police records related to all of Dean's varying IDs. Vera, an independent investigator he regularly works with in Los Angeles, begins tracking down any police reports related to the car and its license plates. Reyes in Las Vegas handles looking into the credit cards. Finally, a helpful professor in Seattle agrees to look at the snapshots he took of the symbols in the trunk; he could certainly find someone in Stanford who would know about them, but that's a little too close to the twins for his comfort.

Henrik takes it upon himself to research Tucson personally. He finds several deaths from wild animals and reports of a potentially rabid wolf in the area (which makes no sense, as Arizona's wolf population is highly endangered and limited to specific reserves), but none in the last few days, and no hospital records of victims matching Dean's description. A pair of rangers did talk to the police, but the officer on the phone didn't speak to them directly and doesn't remember many details. Besides, with no new attacks surfacing, the department has already moved on to its new challenge: uncovering the arsonist(s) responsible for burning down an abandoned warehouse with a small group of transients bunking down inside it.

At least Dean didn't show up on the doorstep smelling of smoke and gasoline, Henrik thinks. Then he remembers the cans of fuel and accelerant in Dean's trunk.

_Migraine_ , he thinks ruefully. _Definitely going to be a migraine._

 


	2. The Enigmatic Mr. Winchester

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Frankly, any advice I or any expert could give you would be mere supposition. _'God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, love, and reason.'_ If you want to know this man's intentions, I would recommend you exercise your reason and talk to him directly. I find that no amount of expertise can ever adequately compensate for a down-to-earth one-on-one discussion with a troubled parishioner. Man turns to religion to understand the inexplicable. When reason fails, faith prevails. It's not outside the range of possibility that there is an acceptable explanation for this man's beliefs, or at least one sufficient to allay your fears… After all, it's not paranoia if you can prove someone is out to get you."
> 
> Henrik thinks that attitude is a little blasé when applied to a man who carries false IDs and at least twenty different implements of violence and mayhem in his trunk… but discovers that somewhere between yesterday and this morning, he has nonetheless begun to share that same sentiment.

After Dean wakes up and all but inhales the light supper Marta's prepared for him, Henrik takes him on a tour (under strict orders from the housekeeper not to let him exert himself or stay out of bed too long). From the tautness around his eyes and the careful way he holds himself, Henrik's betting that Dean hasn't taken any more of the painkillers the doctor left for him. But despite that, he seems excited and impressed by everything about the house, especially the indoor parking for his car, which seems to delight him almost more than having his own room. He thanks Henrik for taking care of "Baby" as he pops the trunk, then says, "Huh" thoughtfully, like maybe he's somehow figured out that Henrik looked inside.

But all he does after that is sling the bag over his good shoulder and pick up the rug carefully with his left hand. "You guys got a washer and dryer around somewhere I could use?"

He begins to lift his right arm up to slam the trunk, but winces when it gets above shoulder height. But before Henrik can move to assist him, he squares his shoulders and finishes closing the trunk, smiling apologetically at Henrik's outstretched hand. "It's okay, I got it. In my line of work, you always gotta be ready to do a lot more'n this, and often in a lot worse shape."

"Really?" Henrik raises a skeptical eyebrow. "In _my_ experience, it's better to avoid exhausting myself with unnecessary pain when I can, so I have more reserves for those times when I can't."

"Must be nice." Dean's smile fades a little. "In _my_ experience, pain ain't something you can avoid…" his eyes unfocus as he glances down and to the left, momentarily caught in some memory. "…An' tryin' to do so just brings more of it. A _lot_ more. Only way out is keeping your head down and just getting' through it."

He looks down at his feet, absently scratching his arm. "Besides, it helps me remember to be less stupid the next time…" Then he straightens up and pastes on a wide, almost fake smile. "And hell if _that_ ain't proof that I picked the wrong job, huh?"

A few moments later, he homes in on the locked basement door and deflects the conversation with a grin. "Hey, why's this room locked? You guys don't have some kind of weird Bluebeard thing going on, right? Or some kinda pictures of Cas and Jimmy that're all old and fugly?"

"Nothing of the sort." Henrik finds himself smiling back. "However, Castiel and James specifically requested to show you and your brother that room themselves."

Frankly, Henrik's glad he doesn't have to explain that room. Chains and leather do nothing for him, but he couldn't do his job if he wasn't utterly familiar and comfortable with that aspect of his employers' lives. If Dean doesn't already know the full nature of the twins' relationship with his brother (and given the box from Mr. S waiting in his room, full disclosure most likely has already happened or is imminent) – well, _regardless_ , he shouldn't learn of it from anyone but them.

Hidden within Dean's cheerful exuberance and wisecracks, Henrik notes, is a very careful examination of each room along the tour. The only thing that puzzles him is what exactly Dean is checking for. He's not casing it like a burglar, and he doesn't seem to care about things that are particularly valuable. Window sills fascinate him, for example, and closets, and any fittings or decorations that look particularly old. And fire safety – he's very concerned with the alarms and the sprinkler system and redundancy, and whether the electrical system has any flickering or potential shorts in it. He asks a lot of questions about the house's history that Henrik has no answers for, most of them a little morbid, like whether or not anyone's ever died in it or if it's built over ground that used to be a cemetery.

After the tour, Henrik gracefully bows out so Dean can call his brother and goes to have a late dinner in the kitchen with Marta. While she rolls out the dough for some kind of pastry – turnovers, he guesses - he listens in over the mic to Dean's enthusiastic conversation, mentally tuning out after the box is opened until his name is mentioned near the end.

A few minutes later, the eavesdropee himself excitedly enters the kitchen, only to open his mouth and then pull up short uncertainly. Henrik calmly keeps eating, giving Dean time to collect himself (and himself time to remember to act like he's not expecting the request).

"Hey, uh... I hope I'm not interrupting, but, uh, Cas 'n Jimmy said that if there was anything I wanted for my room, I should ask you for it, so I was wondering if there was a TV laying around I could use, and maybe Netflix?" He rolls his eyes sarcastically. " _Apparently_ I'm gonna have to take it easy for a while–" and Henrik wonders which of the boys talked him into that– "so I gotta have something to do or I'll go crazy."

On the one hand, Henrik is incredibly loathe to leave the _potentially schizophrenic serial killer with religious delusions who is still inexplicably a guest in this house_ alone with Marta for the next day.

On the other hand – no, there is no other hand. A guest of the Novaks is a guest of the Novaks. It's not like he has to worry about Dean robbing them; he'd be a fool given the credit card Cas authorized in his name (although he does note with approval Dean's default erroneous assumption of an existing television rather than the expectation of having a new one purchased for him). So assuming that his instincts are correct that there will be no violent resolutions tonight, it appears he'll be taking a trip to Fry's tomorrow.

He watches as Marta easily convinces Dean to join them for an evening "snack" that is closer to a full meal, concluding that she will be fine in the house tomorrow without him. In the worst case scenario that Dean actually turns out to be a deranged killer, she can probably just feed him into submission.

Her cooking really is that good.

~*~

Henrik is awake, reading over and responding to his contacts' reports, when their guest rolls out of bed at 8:00 a.m. Over the mic, there's the sound of a pill bottle rattling, then a groan and a sigh, and a muttered _fuck it_.

The bodyguard picks up the intercom and lets Marta know to start Dean's breakfast, then finishes his email authorizing Jason to crack Dean's sealed juvie records. He's halfway through a list of Dean's credit charges in Tucson - which are surprisingly minimal, mostly hotel and gas, considering that David Berkowitz is apparently footing the bill - when he hears Marta bustle into Dean's room.

"Breakfast in bed? Oh my god, you're an angel." Dean laughs. "I'm dead, aren't I? This is heaven, right?"

Marta giggles, and Henrik can hear her pleasure at Dean's visceral appreciation for her skills – more of which bubbles out almost immediately.

"Oh my god, this is so _awesome_." There's a roundness to his words that makes Henrik suspect he's chewing and talking at the same time. "Wait 'til I tell Sammy... has he had any of your cooking yet? He's gonna be blown away." A pause. "I'll tell ya now, stock up good on rabbit food. No one eats salads like that kid does. I swear, I was afraid he was gonna turn into a carrot growing up."

Marta spends the rest of breakfast subtly prompting Dean for more information about Sam, a topic he's happy to brag about. Only towards the end of the conversation, when Marta is clearing the dishes and the painkillers have obviously kicked in, Dean gets all quiet for a minute.

"Hey, I know this is none of my business, but… Jimmy and Cas, do they do this often – pick up strays like Sammy 'n me? I'm sorry if that's rude, an' I won't be mad, I promise. I mean, you have no idea how awesome yesterday and today were and if that's all this is for me, it'd be okay. But Sammy, he's over the moon for 'em, and they seem really cool, but I don't…" He trails off long enough that Henrik almost assumes he's fallen asleep when he continues quietly. "I don't want to see Sammy get hurt anymore."

Whatever Marta says in response, it's too quiet for Henrik to overhear.

~*~

Thanks to the painkillers, Dean sleeps for four hours, waking to a pile of freshly laundered clothing and lunch compliments of Marta. A little while later, he pads out barefoot to the kitchen, wearing ragged jeans and a ratty AC/DC t-shirt. He's more subdued and tired than earlier as he asks if anyone would mind showing him how to use the TV in the living room.

Henrik is happy to do so – it gives him a chance afterwards to locate and unobtrusively remove the mic from Dean's room before James and Castiel arrive that afternoon. He'd prefer to leave the mic there to keep an eye – ear, anyway – on Dean; there are far too many mysteries about him that make no sense. But when it comes to the twins, Henrik maintains a strict policy against electronic media of any kind.

Besides, his team will unravel all of Dean's mysteries sooner or later. They've already collected an impressive amount of data, from his birth certificate (not faked) to his school record (spotty, with frequently subpar performance and a frankly impressive collection of "if he would just _apply_ himself" notes from his instructors, which makes his dropping out to get his GED at 16 unsurprising) to his no-longer-sealed JD arrests.

Dean's past (as much of it as has been uncovered) is highly suspect and full of _wanted-in connection-with_ alerts. A few of the entries connect directly to Dean, and many more link to the car itself, although between the fake IDs and an extremely likely pattern of license plate theft, the growing dossier is still a patchwork of "most likely" and "probably" identifications.

_Sedona AZ, 2000: Drunk and disorderly._  
_New Amsterdam NY, 2000: Impersonating a coroner._  
_Tulsa OK, 1999: Grave robbing._  
_Townsend VT, 1998: Grave robbing._  
_Portland ME, 1997: Camping without a license._  
_Nacogdoches TX, 1996: Impersonating a college student._  
_Billings MN, 1995: In connection with grand larceny._  
_Hurleyville NY, 1995: Shoplifting._  
_White Plains NY, 1994: In connection with hit-and-run (victim disappeared/charges dropped)._  
_Stillwater MN, 1993: Grave robbing._  
_Lewistown MT, 1991: In connection with cattle mutilations._  
_Albuquerque NM, 1989: Impersonating a park ranger._  
_Lawrence KS, 1983: Suspicion of arson._

The list goes on and on. Funny thing is… a lot of the car-related entries happened far long before it could have been Dean at the wheel.

Not that any of them happened officially – not anymore, at least. Henrik's contacts are professionals. And _thorough_.

On his way out the door for his shopping expedition, he passes Marta unsuccessfully arguing with Dean. "Henrik," she says, "tell our guest there is no need for him to sit there in pain when he has a perfectly good prescription sitting on the table in front of him."

Dean purses his lips. "Hey, I took one earlier. It made me loopy and dumb. I don't like feeling like that. Just give me a couple Excedrin and I'll be fine."

_Fine_ isn't the word he'd used to describe Dean, even if it seems to be one of his favorite adjectives for himself. Considering his pallid complexion, it's not even in the same ballpark. But the man's got principles… dumb ones, but principles.

Henrik looks at Marta and shakes his head. "If Mr. Winchester prefers to experience the pain, Marta, it is his right. I'm sure he has his reasons."

Dean's eyes widen, like he hadn't been expecting Henrik to take his side.

The follow-up retort Henrik had been planning stills on his tongue. Perhaps Dean _does_ have a decent reason. Henrik has far more information and proof of intent about Dean than the young man most likely has about any of them. If Henrik were in his shoes, he'd probably make the same sacrifice to ensure that he was safe.

Henrik nods at Dean as he leaves, one professional to another.

Eyes still wide, Dean nods back. Then smiles like the approval was something he hadn't realized he wanted until just then.

~*~

Henrik's shopping trip takes significantly longer than expected.

The entertainment center he selects in the first hour, set for delivery the next day. What delays him is the professor's enthusiastic but concerned response to the photos Henrik emailed him. He is leaving on sabbatical in two days but is available for a phone call more or less immediately, so Henrik stops off at Starbucks for a coffee (black) and croissant (chocolate) and spends the next hour on FaceTime with the professor. He learns more than he had ever expected to know about Dean's widely varied collection of protective sigils and warding, which apparently spans at least six religions, three occult practices (including voodoo), and at least four languages.

The religious obsession coupled with the extensive weapon collection could point toward paranoid schizophrenia, which leads Henrik into stopping off for another lengthy consultation, this time with a psychiatrist in New York City who specializes in religious delusions. Marta would be scandalized to see Henrik parked outside of something as plebian as a Dairy Queen, but what can he say – their malted shakes are a guilty pleasure of his childhood, and their parking lot is convenient. Ultimately, however, the conversation just goes in circles. Without a subject to analyze, the best the psychiatrist can offer is speculation and a firm suggestion that perhaps he should contact the authorities to make sure the man is not connected to any crimes. Henrik does not bother to correct him that at this point, the authorities are far less versed in the particulars of Dean Winchester than he is.

The last call is unexpected and comes from a number that Henrik does not recognize. With so many irons in the fire, however, it would be foolish not to answer it, so he pulls off onto the shoulder of the highway and takes the call. It turns out to be a Methodist minister the professor had contacted as an expert in Christian exorcism rites and demonology. The minister can confirm the historical occult accuracy of the sigils and would very much like to talk with their creator, if at all possible. Apparently two of the sigils Dean has carved onto his guns feature an interesting variation on the _(and at this point Henrik must admit to phasing out somewhat)_ that he has not seen for a number of years, and that was why he had requested Henrik's number.

Ironically, it's this third conversation with this Pastor Murphy – the shortest of all three discussions – that provides the most immediately useful course of action.

"Frankly, any advice I or any expert could give you would be mere supposition. _'God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, love, and reason.'_ If you want to know this man's intentions, I would recommend you _exercise_ your reason and talk to him directly. I find that no amount of expertise can ever adequately compensate for a down-to-earth one-on-one discussion with a troubled parishioner. Man turns to religion to understand the inexplicable. When reason fails, faith prevails. It's not outside the range of possibility that there is an acceptable explanation for this man's beliefs, or at least one sufficient to allay your fears… After all, it's not paranoia if you can prove someone is out to get you."

Henrik thinks that attitude is a little blasé when applied to a man who carries false IDs and at least twenty different implements of violence and mayhem in his trunk… but discovers that somewhere between yesterday and this morning, he has nonetheless begun to share that same sentiment.

~*~

By the time Henrik returns, the sky is dark and the house has three new residents who are currently far too… preoccupied… with Dean and each other to merit interruption. Instead, he eats the dinner Marta has left for him in the kitchen, lingering with coffee over the latest reports from his associates, and then retreats to his quarters, deciding that a one-on-one conversation with Dean can wait until tomorrow.

As it turns out, it doesn't have to. Dean is sitting on the floor outside his room, reading a book by the light of a lamp he obviously confiscated from somewhere.

"So," he says, closing the book and looking pointedly up at Henrik. "We need to talk."

Henrik raises an eyebrow. "I couldn't agree more."

"Marta showed me where you stay, but you weren't here." Dean shrugs. "I coulda just broke in and waited for you in your room, but since I apparently have my _own_ room now I figured I'd try living by the golden rule and just hang out here until you came by." Using the wall for support, he slowly rises to his feet. "Ugh. Turns out sitting like this on a couple'a fucked up ribs isn't such a good idea, even doped up like Sammy made me promise to be. I don't suppose you got a real chair inside I could sit on? 'Cause let me tell you, this ain't a hallway-type conversation."

Henrik waits while Dean makes himself at home in his bedroom, looking oddly comfortable in the utilitarian, orderly space. There are two chairs in his room – a black leather wheeled office chair at the desk, and a cushioned recliner by the window looking across the courtyard at the main house. Henrik bets himself that Dean will take the desk chair to give himself more of an air of authority, but loses; Dean homes in immediately on the comfortable cushions by the window, collapsing stiffly and semi-gracefully into it with a grateful murmur.

Interesting, especially given Dean's earlier reluctance about the oxycodone. Then again, perhaps the painkillers have diminished his resistance to letting himself _be_ comfortable. Regardless, Henrik files the choice away in his mental profile as he sits down in the other chair and turns to face him. "So…"

Dean takes a deep breath. "Okay. This is gonna sound crazy, because it _is_ crazy. But that don't make it a lie, either, okay?" He looks out the window, then leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands steepled together. "Monsters are real, and I hunt them. It's kinda the family business – my dad does, I do, and Sammy did until he decided to get out of the biz and go to college. Everything you saw in the car – the weapons, false IDs, lamb's blood, holy water – it's the tools of my trade."

Henrik looks at him levelly but says nothing. Dean seems to take the silence as a challenge, because he leans forward and pulls off the t-shirt to reveal his wounds. The purple bruises are still vivid, but beginning to fade into green.

"The gashes your doc re-stitched?" He rotates his shoulder instinctively, a gesture that would have left him wincing if it weren't for the oxycodone in his bloodstream. "Werewolf. I was down in Tucson with two other dudes wiping out four of 'em that had moved in and decided to start snacking on the locals. Got clawed saving another guy's skin. I got the rest of the damage when one of his pack managed to throw me against a tree while I was taking down their sister."

He pulls up his pants leg to the faded bite mark Henrik noted before. "Ghoul bit me back in '97. Got the drop on me – I was watching the back door of the funeral home while Dad was supposed to flush him out the front, but uh, things didn't go to plan. Fucker knocked me out and dragged me off for a snack, but Dad followed the tracks and got the drop on him."

He points to his chest. "The tattoo keeps demons from possessing me. Sammy's got the same one; dad made us both get 'em when I turned 17. Had'ta pay under the table to get anyone to ink a 13-year-old."

His hand moves to his right shoulder. "The bullet hole here, Dad hadta shoot through me to get to a witch who was using me as a shield." He shivers. "Fuck, I hate witches."

Henrik raises an eyebrow. "And the circular burn marks?"

Dean's eyes slide low and to the left, and Henrik knows that whatever he says next won't be the truth, or all of it anyway. "Yeah, well, some monsters are more human than others."

His fingers run reflexively across the scars on his chest. A second later he straightens up and pulls the t-shirt on to cover them up.

"My point is, you got great security, and if I was worried about a burglar or a terrorist I'd feel real good about Sammy being here," Dean says challengingly. "But you never retire from the life for good – even if you stop hunting things, there's no guarantee they won't come hunting you down. And all your protection is gonna mean jack if a vengeful spirit or a shifter or a vamp shows up here looking for me, or Sammy, or just for the fuck of it because being undead ain't the party they make it out to be but boatloads of money sure helps ease the pain."

Henrik looks at Dean levelly as all the clues fall into place. It's ridiculous, this fantasy underworld of movie monsters and the heroes who hunt them – more like a setting for some hokey television show than real life.

On the other hand… _something_ swiped four huge gashes into Dean's shoulder.

"I like Cas and Jimmy." Dean smiles softly. "They love Sammy, which makes 'em good people by default, and for some crazy reason I can't figure out, they seem to want me around as well. So even if you aren't worried about me and Sam, I need you to listen to me about fixing this place up, for their sake as well as Sam's."

An uneasy silence settles between them as Henrik contemplates his options. It's almost inconceivable that he could have gone so many years and never seen any sign of this world, while a boy less than half his age could be practically a veteran. And yet… what exactly would he have to gain from such an outlandish story?

Dean stays quiet, clearly not trying to push the situation, but after a minute he can't help fidgeting, shifting back and forth as he tries to subtly assess the room. Unfortunately, there's not a lot to keep him occupied – outside of a collection of military fiction and non-fiction, Henrik's room is still relatively Spartan, a casualty of being more concerned in setting up the house for his charges than settling in to his own quarters.

Finally, Dean sags back into his chair with a sigh. "Man, I would _kill_ for a drink right now, but Marta said no way until I'm off the antibiotics. This blows."

Henrik laughs at that. Then he lets the smile fall off his face and adopts a more serious expression, meeting Dean's gaze head on.

"Okay."

The young man jerks to attention. "Okay?"

"Yes. Okay." Henrik nods. " _Okay_ , I believe that you at least sincerely believe what you say. _Okay_ , I believe that your motives for telling me are altruistic, not ulterior… _Okay,_ you and your concerns have my attention and my temporary suspension of disbelief."

Dean's nods, eyes narrowed. "Well, okay then." A small smile spreads across his lips. "So what now?"

Henrik raps his fist on the desk and leans forward, hoping he doesn't regret what he's about to say.

"Now? Now, you give me proof."

 

 

 


	3. Everybody Loves Tacos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A taco with a fake I.D, that's me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Curious what Jimmy's planning for that nurse uniform? Check out ZoyciteM's awesome timestamp "[Nurse Novak](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6122014)!" (Not to mention Renezinha's amazing illustrations of Nurse Novak taking care of [Dean](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6537466/chapters/16110574) and [Sam](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6537466/chapters/15531280).)

Of course plans never go smoothly.

Naturally, James and Castiel decide to change Henrik's agenda by moving themselves and their boyfriend in the next day, rather than at the end of the semester. This means Henrik spends the morning rubbing his temples as he coordinates and makes cancellations and reminds himself that the twins' ability to change plans decisively at a moment's notice is a sign of _leadership_ and _initiative_ , and not a purposeful undermining of everything he already had planned for the day.

Dean's entertainment center arrives on time, at least – hopefully an auspicious start for the move. When he comes to check on the installation, he finds the man cross-legged on his bed, surrounded by scattered pages from at least seven different newspapers in California and Arizona, all about a week old.

When Henrik raises an eyebrow, he smirks and points to the various stories he's circled and cut out, "Working on getting you that proof. Unfortunately, I haven't found anything closer than nine hours by car, and Marta says I'm not allowed to drive on the painkillers. I tried telling her I've driven in far worse condition, and she said she'd withhold lunch if I even thought about it."

Dean frowns. "Plus, Sammy'd get mad at me. Fuck, I was going someplace with this…" He rubs his head, voice trailing off.

"The papers…?" Henrik prompts discreetly.

"Oh, yeah, that's it!" Dean grins. "Think you could get me the last couple'a days of the local ones? Town like this has to have its ghosts somewhere."

Henrik eyes Dean's ink-smudged fingers dubiously. "Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to look things up on a laptop?"

Dean scratches the back of his head and squints a little. "Nah. That's more Sammy's thing. Couldn't pry that kid off it, y'know?" The corner of Dean's mouth quirks up into a smile. "Too smart for his own good, he is."

Henrik agrees to bring the papers when he returns in the afternoon, privately deciding to make sure a laptop is available as well, just in case. When he informs Dean about the afternoon's move-in, the man lights up at hearing that his brother will be living there permanently as of today. Then he looks guilty, and glances shiftily down at the papers, furtively gathering them up and stuffing them in his nightstand. "Sammy doesn't need to know about any of this, right? Or Jimmy, or Cas. They'd just worry."

Agreeing to that is easy – there's no way Henrik wants either of his charges anywhere close to Dean's monsters, real or imaginary.

After getting Marta's assurance that Dean will under no circumstances be allowed to do anything more strenuous than watch and direct, he's off to the campus to meet the movers and oversee the packing. On his way out, he passes a smugly smiling James carrying something that looks suspiciously like a [nurse's uniform](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6122014) on his way _into_ the house.

Today Henrik is more prepared for the warning throb that starts up behind his temples. With a sigh, he pulls out his bottle of extra-strength Excedrin and swallows two dry, then adds "make sure that the workmen do not accidentally violate James or Dean's privacy" to his already overtaxed list of concerns for the day.

~*~

Overall, the move goes well. Henrik is not surprised, or relieved, or any such nonsense. It is his _job_ to ensure that it goes smoothly, and he is very good at his job.

He does allow himself a brief moment of professional pride ( _not_ smugness), especially since it means that his evening is peaceful and uninterrupted. Not that he spends it relaxing – after dropping off Dean's bundle of newspapers, he has the boys' flight plans to finalize, security details to confirm, and a rather large concatenated file of Dean Winchester's school records to peruse.

He doesn't glean a lot of new information from them, which at this point in the game is actually good news. It means the profile he's developed is reliable; outliers would indicate that he's missed something in the data.

According to his transcripts, Dean has clocked significantly fewer schools than his brother, but that's unsurprising considering that he dropped out at 16 and got his GED with a respectable 660 across the four tests. The score backs up the lamentations of his teachers passed along with his poor to middling grades. Dean "shows SO much potential if he would just apply himself," "is extremely smart but unmotivated," "obviously understands the subject matter but repeatedly fails to turn his homework in," "seems to be setting himself up with an unwarranted expectation of failure" and twenty or so other variations on the theme.

There are also more sinister notations – concerns over patterns of truancy, times when he was sent home for inappropriate clothing, recommendations for free school breakfast and lunch voucher programs. And, consistently, unanswered questions between principals and teachers regarding unexplained bruises and does anyone _please_ have _any_ witnesses who could attest that they weren't caused in a playground fight after school?

The one thing the records _don't_ show are any visits from Child Protective Services, but that doesn't mean anything. A lot of state agency guidelines are designed to protect the innocent, which means that parents investigated for child abuse and subsequently cleared of the charges get their record wiped clean. It's a mechanic that leaves the system ripe for exploitation. Between that and the Winchesters' frequent moves, it's no wonder Dean and his brother fell through the cracks.

In the year leading up to Dean's 16th birthday, the annotations get more disparaging – fighting, detention, suspension, vandalism, bringing a weapon to school, drinking on school property, inappropriate public displays of affection – and the teacher's notes get more dismissive. Instead of a waste of potential, Dean is now a waste of resources, a "disruptive influence" with a "flagrant disregard for regulations," a "chronic problem with authority" and a "dangerous obsession with the occult (possibly Satanic??!?)" (that last remark underlined and circled three times).

For a couple of months – not coincidentally the months that line up with his sealed shoplifting conviction and stay at a boy's home – it seems like things might turn around. The grades improve, he gets into sports, there's even a notation about a meeting with a college guidance counselor… but then _wham_ , almost the minute he turns 16, he drops out.

Normal kids drop out and join the military, have a shotgun wedding, run away, or cultivate a drug habit and a dead-end job. Dean's got something that looks suspiciously like cigarette burns across his body, and a bullet hole his father apparently didn't think twice about putting there – more reasons than most to split. Yet he drops out and… goes nowhere. Sticks with his father and starts racking up charges of arson and grave-robbing.

The "family business."

Up to now, he hasn't paid too much attention to the father. He'd seemed like any other vet with a tragic past who never adjusted to civilian life – abusive, most likely suffering from PTSD, and out of the picture. Now, though...

Henrik keeps a bottle of Gordon's on the shelf above his desk, a simple drink reserved for complex problems. He pours a shot and savors the gin's burn, staring at the files for an answer he just doesn't have.

He needs more intel.

Henrik sits up and flips open his phone to email Detroit, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, cc'ing the same message to all three contacts at once: _New target, same parameters: Dean's father, John Winchester. Give me whatever you've found on him by 2 p.m. tomorrow._

~*~

The next morning, Henrik discovers that despite moving off campus _and_ in disregard of Castiel's recent mugging, the boys intend to continue experiencing college life the way other students do. Moreover, this apparently precludes both being personally chauffeured or escorted on foot by their bodyguard, against said bodyguard's considered advice and in disregard for the fact that he has been doing his job longer than they have been alive.

But, rather than belabor the issue, Henrik simply leaves the house before the boys finish their breakfast and cases the neighboring streets for potential threats. The lone potential miscreant he spots this morning is a ragged calico alley cat with half her tail missing and a large divot in her left ear. He's seen her around a few times before, and lets her continue on her route with a stern warning not to cause any trouble. If one of Marta's expertly cooked pieces of bacon happens to fall out of his pocket as he passes her by, it is _entirely_ by accident.

When he returns, James and Sam have left, and Castiel and Dean are caught up in a quiet conversation in the master bedroom while the young Novak packs three suitcases for the weekend. Castiel still looks tired, but waves off Henrik's offer to help. As it turns out, it's just as well – he's barely had time to sit down with his coffee to open the first of his associates' responses when the limousine company calls to confirm that the car he's ordered will arrive promptly at the appointed time… tomorrow.

Rescheduling a car normally isn't a problem, but there's a visiting dignitary from Kenya coming in to San Francisco this afternoon and the rest of the fleet is already booked. Henrik prays for strength and asks to speak to the manager. _Someone's_ head is going to roll.

~*~

By the time Henrik pulls his SUV back into the garage, his day is finally calming down.

The Novak plane has departed successfully, its charges and their luggage safely onboard, and the weather looks calm and clear to Chicago.

The limousine fiasco has also been successfully resolved with significant groveling and apologies on the part of the company, but Henrik is already weighing the pros and cons of simply purchasing a limousine and driver to be on permanent standby. It's arguably an overreaction at the moment; Henrik does _not_ like it when his smoothly run machine sputters and falters due to incompetence, but firing an entire company simply because of one operator's mistake seems a bit harsh. On the other hand, by the time the twins turn 21 and begin to have serious societal obligations to fulfill, a permanent driver will probably be necessary, so there's little harm in planning ahead.

He's still mulling over the options in the kitchen as he grabs a bottle of water and the plate of homemade tacos with _arroz rojo_ and _tamalito_ that Marta kept warm for him. He cradles the bottle in the crook of his elbow so he can carry the plate with one hand and check the messages on his phone with the other as he walks back to his room to unwind.

He's got five unopened emails to go through, at least one of which will hopefully begin filling in the gaps in the profile. As he pushes open his bedroom door with one hip, he mentally catalogues the afternoon's schedule. Lunch first (the tacos smell delicious), then emails and some research of his own, and finally he'll hunt down their house guest and find out whether he's made any headway in his search for–

Dean looks up from Henrik's bed when he enters, the pages of Dean's profile sorted and spread across the bedspread in front of him.

"Dude, I'm flattered," he smirks, "but you _do_ know you could have found most of this out by just buying me a beer, right?"

Henrik considers it a success that he only jumps back a _little_ , and that out of all the things he is carrying, the only thing that drops is the water bottle. Dean does have a surprisingly versatile number of talents; all things considered, he shouldn't have been surprised to find breaking and entering among them.

There's no point in pretending that Dean didn't get the drop on him, so he places the food on his desk instead with a casually impressed smile. "I thought you were practicing the golden rule?" When he sits down, he makes sure to angle his chair to look at Dean head-on.

Dean shrugs unrepentantly, his eyes still slightly bright with painkillers, but much more coherent than this morning. "Yeah, well… I got bored." He taps the files. "And it's not like you've got a lot room to talk here. All you're missing is my underwear and shoe size."

Henrik lifts the plastic wrap and breathes in the delicious aromas. "So I just have to ask and you'll tell me whatever I need to know…?"

Dean grins. "Won't know until you try."

Henrik unfolds his napkin across his lap. "And if I ask you about your father?"

Dean's smile falls. " _No one_ needs to know about him," he says flatly. "And besides, you're eating. I'd just ruin your appetite."

After a moment, his face brightens. "And never mind that, I've got something more interesting for you." He shoves aside the papers on the bed until he locates the particular folded-up piece of newsprint he is looking for. "You wanted proof, right? I found us a hunt!"

Dean scoots over to the edge of the bed and passes Henrik the newspaper. It's from the San Francisco Examiner, two days past: "Owner Move-In Eviction Ends in Double Tragedy."

Henrik begins to skim through the article as he starts in on his rice, but barely gets one paragraph in before Dean starts excitedly summarizing it for him: "It's classic, salt-and-burn, easiest one I could have picked for you. Old lady gets evicted from the place she's lived in for decades. Dies in the house before they can make her leave. Douchebag landlord moves right in, and reports getting harassed by neighbors because of the former tenant - everything from rude phone calls to allegedly sabotaging the place's wiring and heating so none of it works right. A day or two later, he starts complaining to the cops about hearing intruders in the place, but they don't find anything. Day after that, his neighbors find him dead at the bottom of the stairs up to the apartment."

Marta's cornbread is as delicious as always, light and fluffy and perfectly steamed. Henrik takes a big forkful and savors its sweetness as he figures out how to respond. "So… you're saying it's foul play?"

Dean rolls his eyes. "It sounds that way, sure, but I guarantee it isn't. It's – look, when someone dies, especially with a lot of strong emotion or unfinished business, sometimes they don't always move on. So grandma's ghost is probably still rattling around in there, refusing to leave. You come up there with me, I prove to you that I'm not nuts, and I get granny to move on to her bingo hall in the sky -- it's a win-win situation."

Well, he _did_ ask for proof. In the light of day, though, the idea of ghosts are patently ridiculous. "Or maybe the owner was just an asshole with a guilty conscience who tripped on his way to the bathroom."

Dean raises his eyebrows. "Yeah, could be. It happens. We won't know until we check it out. I figure I'll show you the ropes tonight, just the basics you need for this fight, and tomorrow we head up there to see. If I'm right, we save any future owners from ending up with broken necks, you get what _you_ want, which is the truth about me, and I get what _I_ want, which is to get this place safe for Sammy, Cas an' Jimmy." He shrugs. "If I'm wrong, I'll just keep looking until I _do_ find you that proof."

Henrik reaches for a taco. "Assuming that there's proof to be found."

"Yeah, see, that's where I've got the advantage on ya. I've got 18 years of knowing that the monster in the closet is real, so I don't have to worry. I know I'll find it." Dean thumps the stack of the papers. "I'm not some jigsaw puzzle ya gotta put together. I say there's a hunt, I don't got a reason to lie. This job pays for shit and I'm always one step away from getting arrested – why the hell would I make it up? I mean–"

Dean's stomach interrupts his rant with a loud growl. He coughs, looking longingly at the tacos. "Hey, d'you mind if…"

Henrik sighs a little as he pushes the plate toward Dean. He _doesn't_ really mind, though; Dean's forthrightness, painkiller-fueled or not, is worth the loss of a taco or two. Even Marta's tacos.

Dean digs in with gusto, wiping a strand of errant taco sauce off his chin with the back of his hand. "You want layers, you got the wrong Winchester. Sammy's the deep one. He's like a burrito, y'know – you gotta peel away the foil to see anything, and even then you don't know what kind of stuff is inside until you get past the burrito…thing."

"Tortilla," Henrik offers helpfully.

"Yeah, that." Dean gestures expansively with his hand. "And me? I'm more like this taco, y'know, what you see is what you get."

"Except for the part where you use a fake ID and credit card?" Dean's good mood, Henrik finds, is somewhat infectious.

Dean grins back broadly, laughing out loud. "Yeah! Exactly! You got it. A taco with a fake ID, that's me."

~*~

"-naissance first, then if signs point to yes, we'll go in and– hey, you with me? Need me to go over something again?"

Henrik's eye twitches. _No_ , he wants to say. _No, I don't want to go over anything. I want to write this off as a crazy idea and call the whole thing off._ Except he doesn't say it, because this is all his fault. He was the one who asked for proof, after all, and besides, there's still that small percent chance that Dean isn't crazy, that there's something out there that could hurt his employers and their sons that he has no idea how to protect them against.

He just… hadn't expected that asking for proof would translate to sitting in a hotel of questionable cleanliness that he would otherwise never be caught dead in. It has a continental breakfast, for god's sake, the bastion of people who don't care that their food has been sitting out, picked over and breathed on by every other guest in the hotel. ("Yeah, yeah, I know," Dean says when he notices Henrik's scandalized expression inside the room. "I know, we could be stayin' at the Hilton on Cas an' Jimmy's dime, but trust me, when you're hunting, you don't wanna leave a paper trail if you can help it. These places take cash and they don't check IDs.")

And he certainly hadn't expected it would include Dean getting a picture from him – "You got one from like maybe two years ago? I could just take one of you now, but it's always more believable if it's out of date." – and returned it to him as a fake ID misnaming Henrik as Rod Price, electrician. Dean's own ID declares him to be insurance adjuster Bryan Bassett – "the easiest cover in these kinds of things, no one wants to argue with a sympathetic insurance agent because they all want the biggest settlement possible."

For not the first time this evening, Henrik finds himself wondering _exactly_ how protecting his charges has translated into planning how to best intentionally break the law and god knows how many ordinances.

"Henrik?" Dean is looking worriedly at him now, he realizes. "Look, man, I know this is kinda below your pay grade, so if you don't wanna-"

"Salt for purification and protection, right?" Henrik interrupts. "And iron for disrupting ghosts in a fight?"

Dean smiles. "Yeah, you got it." His face lights up – he might love the house and its luxuries, but it's clear that here in a dirty hotel room, making plans for war, he's having the time of his life.

"I'm telling ya, Henrik, you're gonna be a natural at this."

 

 

 


	4. Starbucks and Solidarity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Approximately 36 hours later, Henrik can confirm without a shadow of a doubt that he does not want to be a natural at this. But that's getting ahead of things._
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> Dean and Henrik investigate the apartment and interview suspects. Henrik looks for mundane explanations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a 2K throwaway fic, not a casefic that's going to total out at more than 20K. It was supposed to be one chapter long. Then just three chapters, I told myself. Then four, and that would be it. But I swear, AS ZOYCITEM IS MY WITNESS, it's finishing up in five chapters.

Approximately 36 hours later, Henrik can confirm without a shadow of a doubt that he does not _want_ to be a natural at this.

But that's getting ahead of things.

In the morning, Dean lays out the plans for the day over breakfast sandwiches at Starbucks after Henrik absolutely puts his foot down at the hotel's offerings of bagels and dry cereal – free or not, he has standards. Henrik goes for his standard croissant and latte; Dean opts for the cheapest of the sandwiches ("bacon and egg and cheese, none of that low-fat, low-sodium crap") and a regular coffee ("black, the way it's meant to be – Sammy's the one who can't get enough of those frou-frou lattes"). They find a relatively secluded table, for which Henrik is immediately grateful once Dean starts explaining their itinerary.

"We can't just go in guns blazing," Dean says. "Not that we would – guns make too much noise to use when the houses are this close together."

Dean eats like a man who loves food but is not used to having the time to appreciate it, Henrik thinks, talking through the sentences and punctuating each pause by sipping his coffee. Not messy or uncultured so much as overly and unnecessarily efficient.

"Hell, you don't even bring a gun to a case like this if you can help it. If the absolute worst happens, it can be the difference between serving two years or twenty years." He puts his coffee down and pats both pockets on his jacket down. His brow furrows when both turn up empty, then clears as he remembers the cheap pleather briefcase hanging over the back of his chair. "And keep anything that can be used to concretely identify you or make you look like a nutcase to a minimum. Keep the information you gather on something like this–" he closes the briefcase triumphantly, brandishing a small wire-bound notebook in his hand– "easy to carry, easy to destroy."

Normally Henrik would not be worried about being arrested, period. Throughout his tenure with the Novaks, he's only had to invoke his employers' names a handful of times to gain cooperation, but when he has – it's amazing what the Novak name can accomplish.

Of course, the way he's dressed right now, it'd be hard to get anyone to believe him seriously enough to give him more than his one mandatory phone call. Henrik fidgets with the collar of the blue t-shirt Dean had picked out for him to wear. They'd stopped by a Goodwill last night to buy the shirt, along with a pair of faded jeans and scuffed work boots, after Dean had rejected everything in his closet. ("Seriously, all this stuff? _Way_ too high a pay-grade for an electrician. Even at union rates.") The _coup de grace_ is a yellow hard hat ("Not sure how protective that thing is, so try not to hit your head on anything."), a tool belt ("I'm telling ya, stick a hammer in it and no one will question you about anything, it's like an automatic multipass."), and work gloves ("Bonus, no fingerprints!") that Dean had proudly extracted from his trunk.

Henrik himself is less sure about the outfit – he'd never trust (or employ) an electrician without a proper uniform and union number, and the gloves are more suited to outdoors gardening than fine wiring. Not to mention, an electrician should be carrying any number of tools, but a hammer isn't high among them. Then again, he supposes, most people aren't trained to question these kinds of details.

There's a reason that assassins and kidnappers like to use those disguises, after all.

Dean himself is clad in a cheap blue suit and a tie improbably covered with little smiling cartoon houses, with a pair of wire-framed reading glasses perched on the end of his nose for what is apparently "maximum geek value." Clearly off-the-rack and unfitted, the outfit would never pass muster in the Novaks' circles. (Henrik makes a note to make sure Dean visits the twins' tailor before their parents are next in town.) Still, looking at Dean across the table, Henrik has to admit that he perfectly fits his cover as a mid-grade, pencil-pushing insurance adjuster.

"So, first things first, we do our due diligence – make sure it's actually a hunt, make sure we're hunting the right thing, anything else we ought know." Dean pops the last of his sandwich in his mouth and grins. "Same basic kinda threat eval you probably do… 'cept grunts like me don't _pay_ others to gather intel we can get ourselves."

Henrik, still only halfway through his croissant, refrains from rising to Dean's not-so-subtle dig. He also refrains from pointing out that grunts don't usually use terms like due diligence, either. Instead, he sips his frou-frou vanilla caramel latte and makes yet another mental note to go through those reports on John Winchester that are still languishing unopened in his email once this is over.

"A lot of the research part is actually pretty boring stuff." Dean pulls out his bottle of painkillers and shakes a pill onto the table. "We'll hit the coroner's office first, see what happened to the old lady and check out the landlord at the same time. Probably not gonna find a lot, but you never know." He pulls out his pocket knife and carefully cuts the pill into quarters.

Henrik raises his eyebrows pointedly and coughs as Dean dry-swallows one quarter and drops the other fragments into the bottle.

Dean meets Henrik's glance evenly. "I can't afford to be off my game on a hunt, especially – no offense – with a civvie along. I promised Sammy I'd take 'em, and I am. If he only wanted me to use 'em exactly as prescribed, he shoulda been more specific." He shrugs unrepentantly. "Besides, hot-shot lawyer-wannabe like him oughta know better than to forget about loopholes."

It's a fair point, Henrik reasons, and then immediately worries what it means that Dean's perspective is beginning to seem so rational.

"If we didn't have a good prospect on the ghost's identity, we'd hit the library and town records next, see if the house had a history of anything weird. I think granny's a pretty solid lead, though. If they buried her, we'll have an even more fun evening ahead of us. If they nuked her…" The hunter drains his coffee and stands up. "Hold that thought."

A minute or two later, he settles back down in his chair with a refill. "The main point of tonight is proof, right? So if she's been cremated, we're just gonna go in and let you see her, then get out and I'll sic Bobby on finding someone else to track down what's keeping her here."

Henrik nods, wiping his mouth with his napkin.

Dean flips to the second page in his notebook, where a couple of addresses and names are scrawled. "Since we've got a pretty good lead, we're gonna skip the library and go straight to interviewing the neighbors of the late, largely unlamented Sean Oliva and his former tenant, Anna Velasquez. Since Oliva had complained about problems with the wiring and heating, we're going in as an insurance team. Now, as my electrician, you don't gotta worry about the interviews. Just stand there and look interested. Hell, look bored, it'll seem even more authentic. The only thing you gotta worry about is when I get them to show you to the fuse box."

He smirks. "We don't have keys to the place, so you and the fuse box are gonna be a distraction to give me time to jimmy the door open. All you gotta do is open the box up, look at a few switches with your flashlight and grunt once or twice. Ask a question if you need to, to keep the neighbor occupied – just keep eyes on you for at least three minutes. If I don't have the door opened by then, I'm not gonna have it opened at all, so go ahead and head back to me."

"Flashlight?" Henrik asks. In response, Dean pulls out a small handheld one from his pocket and tosses it to him; it's even got a clip to attach to the tool belt.

Henrik appreciates the attention to detail. It's important to take pride in your work.

"Doesn't matter what you find, really. Unless there's something like a rat living in the box, just tell me it all checks out. I'll thank the neighbor for their time, mention that we need to double-check the apartment's wiring, and open the door in front of 'em so it looks legit. Once the neighbor goes away, we'll check for anything suspicious."

Dean looks at Henrik's pastry hungrily, then back at the counter, then _back_ at Henrik, and back _again_ at the counter. He drums his fingers on the counter and finally stands back up again.

"Oh, and we'll case the joint for additional points of entry, too," he tosses out casually as he stands up and heads back to the cash register. "Y'know, in case we need to figure out a second way to break in later on tonight."

Henrik pops two Excedrin as he sits and tries to process yet another new addition to the day's schedule of criminal activities. (And what does it say, really, when that schedule includes B&E and you think, "Well, that's not as bad as it _could_ be?")

Dean returns with a box full of croissants. "Dude, this thing–" he waves the credit card Castiel gave him before slotting it back in his wallet– "seriously awesome. Lunch is on me. Remind me to thank Cas and Jimmy again when they get back."

A practically unlimited credit card, and Dean is content with using it for an oil change and a box of croissants. Any suspicions Henrik might have still been entertaining about Dean trying to con his way into Novak money evaporate in the logic of six pastries.

~*~

The afternoon finds Henrik at the base of a small set of steps leading up to a vividly green and purple Victorian, the scene of the crime. (Two crimes, if you include the building's garish paint job. Which Henrik does.)

As Dean has predicted, the Medical Examiner's Office at the Hall of Justice on Bryant Street ("and how fuckin' cool is that, bein' able to say you work at the Hall of Justice?") had been cooperative but ultimately less than useful. The former tenant's body had already been cremated, all signs pointing to death by natural causes, and Oliva's corpse looked exactly like you would expect – bloated and disgusting, but hardly unnatural. By all appearances, two completely unfortunate but utterly explainable deaths.

So now it's on to the neighbors. Dean's betting they won't know anything either, but he's been schooling Henrik on the finer points of bullshit since they left the coroner's office. Just in case.

"Being a hunter is all about attitude," Dean says in the car as they turn off Bryant and head down towards Valencia and the Mission. "You got two magic phrases; say 'em with enough conviction and you can get away with anything. The first one–" Dean ticks it off on his finger, forearms resting on the wheel to steer "–is for when anyone asks how come you don't know something they think you oughta know. Don't matter what it is, everyone thinks they know better than you. So don't contradict 'em, just shrug and say, _'I know, right? Cutbacks. The whole office is overworked. It's fuckin' nuts is what it is.'"_

Henrik nods, confirming the route on his GPS and scanning ahead for potential pedestrians. "And the second one?"

"Number two's even easier. If anyone asks why you're someplace you're not supposed to be, just flash 'em your ID real quick and say, _'It's okay, I'm supposed to be here.'_ "

Henrik can't help it – he snorts. "That actually works?"

Dean smirks. "Nine times outta ten, yeah. Don't say _'authorized'_ , 'cause sometimes they ask who said so. But _'supposed to be here?'_ No one really wants to check; they just want plausible deniability so they can say it's not their fault if it turns out you aren't."

The neighborhood has changed since Henrik was here last, more than ten years ago. It's a lot cleaner, a lot busier, a lot _whiter_. As he searches for parking, Dean momentarily laments the loss of a particular bodega he'd discovered six months back on a poltergeist call, and even more so, the loss of the homemade tortas that were a specialty of the rotund woman who'd worked there. ("Seriously, Henrik, right up there with Marta's pancakes.")

The street's character has definitely changed for the blander, but the gentrification ameliorates his fear that the car will be broken into while they are gone. (Dean seems to have no such fear, and Henrik makes a note to ask if any of the symbols his experts had yet to identify were any kind of voodoo to protect against that.)

Of course, the gentrification is also indirectly the reason why Anna Velasquez's new landlord was using shifty rent practices to evict a 92-year-old lady from her home. Progress always comes with a death count.

Not all the traditions have been eradicated, though. There's a small shrine in memory of Mrs. Velasquez propped up against a telephone pole outside the house, decorated with flowers and incense, pictures and ribbons. The top photo shows a tiny Latina grandmother with leathery wrinkled skin and a bright grin, seated like a matriarch in a recliner, a tiny Chihuahua in her lap, surrounded by the doting faces of three generations of her family and a banner wishing her a happy 88th birthday.

Mrs. Velasquez is clearly missed and mourned. Henrik notes that no such shrine exists for her landlord.

Dean kneels down and mutters something under his breath as he examines a locket dangling from a tack driven into the pole. There's nothing exceptional about it – it's old but definitely not an heirloom – but Dean looks inordinately pleased as he snaps it shut. Just as Henrik opens his mouth to ask about it, though, there's the _snickt_ of a lock unlocking behind them. Dean mouths "Later" at him and straightens his jacket, morphing into a mousy, mild-mannered shadow of himself as he turns around.

At one time the stately building was one large house, but someone, at some point in time, vivisected it into three separate apartments. Tall stairs leading to the top story are visible through the glass on the wooden doors to the left and right, bracketing a door to the ground floor apartment. To the far left, street-level stairs lead down to what Henrik presumes to be the basement.

The man exiting the door on the right with a suit bag over one shoulder and a neoprene laptop bag over the other is white, moderately well-off, and utterly unschooled in how to dress himself. The clothing is expensive and somewhat tailored, but his ivory button-down is too loose across the chest, the knot in his tie is lumpy, and his pants are improperly hemmed, hanging low enough behind his heels to touch the ground.

_None of which an electrician is supposed to care about,_ Henrik reminds himself firmly, trying to look bored.

"Excuse me, Mr.–" Dean consults his notebook. "Mr. Weimar, correct? Do you have a moment?"

The man's shoulders stiffen and his glance skitters away from Dean. He swings his laptop bag in front of him like a shield and tries to push past them, muttering something about giving at the office.

Dean is faster, though, shifting to cut off his escape down the stairs. "Bryan Bassett." He flashes his card and puts it away in his pocket. "I'm the insurance adjuster with Mr. Oliva's estate. Before his _unfortunate_ death, your landlord had complained about the electrical and cooling systems. We just have a few questions for you to help us determine the extent of the situation."

"I can't– I don't–" the man sighs, following it up with a petulant, "but it's _Saturday_."

"Tell me about it," Dean grimaces sympathetically. "Our whole office is overworked."

Weimar suddenly deflates, his shoulders dropping in sullen acquiescence. " _Fine._ But I was heading out and I'm already late, so if this takes too long, I'm cutting you off. Okay?" His eyes dart suspiciously between Dean and Henrik. "This better not end up with anyone jacking up my rent, man. I'm rent controlled – don't forget that."

Dean smiles thinly. "Wouldn't think of it."

Ultimately, unfortunately, Weimar doesn't know a lot. Yes, he remembers Oliva complaining about electrical fluctuations. No, he doesn't remember whether Mrs. Velasquez had similar complaints. No, his apartment doesn't have any problems with being cold. No, he didn't know Mrs. Velasquez very well. No, he doesn't have time to show anyone the fuse box and he really needs to get going, but say, do they know when the apartment will be going on the market, because he knows a few people who would be willing to pay top dollar to get in an early bid on it?

Mr. Weimar is kind of a douche.

Just as Henrik is thinking that, Dean shakes his head and says, "Man, what a douche."

Perhaps Henrik has been spending a little _too much_ time trying to understand Dean.

A low, smooth feminine voice chuckles behind them. "Tell me about it."

~*~

Henrik and Dean swivel as one. There's a tall, middle-aged black woman dressed in jeans and some kind of a pastel blue dress-smock standing in the open center doorway, watching Weimar drive away in his Prius with active disdain.

Dean segues immediately back into character, stepping forward with a smile to shake her hand. "Bryan Bassett, insurance adjuster."

"Pearl Davis, hairdresser." She turns to Henrik, her shoulder-length braids rustling slightly as she moves. "And you are–?"

"Rod Price, ma'am. Electrician." He takes off his hat and stashes it under one arm, then shakes her hand.

"Huh." She looks him up and down twice, then turns back to Dean. "You here about Anna?" Henrik can't help but feel like he's been judged and found wanting.

"Mr. Oliva – er, well, actually, not him, just his apartment." Dean ducks his head awkwardly, a silent apology for the crassness of the situation. "Sorry, that probably came out a little insensitive. I promise you, I'm not really a jerk."

Davis snorts. "Don't you feel bad one second. That asshole didn't care about nothing but that apartment. Best epitaph an ass like him deserves, ain't no one cares about him now he's gone."

Dean nods and flips his notebook open to a new page. "Would you have a few minutes to talk about everything?"

"Well, normally I'd be up to my elbows in suds right now, but seeing as how my next appointment cancelled on me…" She checks her watch. "Sure. C'mon in, we can talk in my office." She catches Henrik peering past her at the hairdressing chair installed in the front room and rolls her eyes as she ushers them into the apartment. "Don't worry, I'm zoned for it."

At one point the room they enter was a sitting parlor, but now it's a one-woman hair salon. There's a sink against the back wall, connected by hose to a smaller hair-washing basin on rollers behind the chair. On the other side of the chair is a cart with brushes, combs and curlers, plus a small television set. A shelf full of different dyes and hair products stands against the far wall, opposite a small bookshelf filled with magazines. The rest of the room's furnishings are chairs, a small couch and some (at best guess, plastic) plants, and a small army of photographs and portraits on the wall.

Henrik takes a seat in one of the chairs against the nearest wall, a plush burgundy number under a framed portrait of Paul Robeson, and lets Dean do the talking. Not that it takes much to get the hairdresser to talk – unlike Weimar, Davis has a lot to say, and absolutely no compunction about saying all of it.

"So…" Dean takes his own seat on a faded striped divan sandwiched beneath an autographed picture of Tina Turner and a framed photograph of President Obama, crossing his legs and resting his pen against the notebook. "According to our records, the tenant before Oliva died of old age…?"

"Old age didn't get Anna," Davis says fiercely. "That goddamn spineless bottom feeder broke her heart."

According to Davis, Mrs. Velasquez – Anna – was a good friend and neighbor ("Came in every two weeks to dye her hair black") and beloved by all who knew her. Her grandkids visited regularly, some even trying to convince her to move closer to the rest of her family in New Mexico, but all she wanted was to live out her time in peace. She'd outlived her husband Tito (heart attack) and her children Roberto (shot when his store was robbed), Ayura (cancer) and Kimberly (also heart attack), not to mention her dog Chico (chicken bones) and at least four different cats, but still had a zest for life up to the day she died.

On the other hand, Oliva (the spineless bottom feeder) was apparently also a "money-grubbing asshole" and a "lying piece of shit" with "his head so far up his ass nothing but shit came out of his mouth." He'd promised Mrs. Velasquez that she could stay there until she died, but the minute the bill of sale for the house went through, he changed his tune.

"Bastard couldn't wait to pull that owner move-in bullshit on her so he could get his hands on her apartment," Davis says, wiping down the sink angrily. "We all knew he just wanted to quadruple the price and move in another douche like Wiener."

Dean sniggers, flashing Henrik a grin at her intentional mispronunciation of the other tenant's name.

"We helped Anna file a protest – it's illegal, you know, you can't _do_ an owner move-in on the elderly." Her nose scrunches up like she's remembering a bad smell. "And while we were waiting to hear back on that, she started getting random phone calls at odd hours, nothing but weird breathing and hang-ups."

Davis tosses the wet rag into the sink and perches on the edge of her stool, rearranging the various bottles of products on her tray table agitatedly. "Next thing you know, a guy shows up to disconnect the phone because her 'son' called to cancel it? You know, the _dead_ one. And after that, it was the PUC tryin' to follow orders she never made to shut off her water, and the same thing with the electricity. We all _knew_ who was behind it, we just had to prove it, but before we could–" she trails off.

"What an _asshole_ ," Dean interjects.

Henrik is inclined to agree.

"She was just tired at the end," Davis says softly. "Tired and disgusted with how wretched some folks can get when they get dollar signs in their eyes. It just got to be too much for her." She stands up and goes to a side cabinet, pulling out gloves and a bottle of straightener.

Dean looks thoughtful. "I'm surprised Oliva had the guts to move in after all that."

She snorts and begins to arrange the items on her cart. "I think he did it to spite us, since nobody really thought he actually wanted to do an owner move-in. That or he was looking for a reason to evict me. It wasn't a real move-in, though; the cops said he was barely unpacked up there."

"So when Oliva died…" Dean prompts.

Her laugh is low and full-bodied and absolutely full of schadenfreude. "Karma is a _bitch_ , ain't she? All that low-down dirty dealing to get what he wants, and it goes and kills him. I only wish I hadn't been asleep at the time so I could have enjoyed hearing him fall down all those stairs."

Henrik weighs the possibility that the hairdresser is lying. "He had it coming" is definitely a simpler and more plausible answer than "a ghost killed him." Davis doesn't _seem_ like she has anything to hide, but… she's also young and healthy enough to potentially hide in a darkened room and push someone down the stairs.

Then again, "he slipped and fell down the stairs" is even more plausible than "he had it coming." It's just possible that Davis is just a hairdresser and Henrik is overthinking things _way_ too much.

Dean finally steers the conversation around to Oliva's complaints about the apartment. Davis confirms that Anna had never had a problem with any of her utilities until Oliva started messing with her. However, after his move-in, Oliva definitely claimed there was a break in the wiring and that his electric heat kept cutting out. Davis herself has never had any temperature problems, but both she and Weimar (Weiner) have had their lights flicker on and off occasionally. In Davis's personal opinion, Oliva probably paid someone to sabotage the apartment and didn't think about the fact that he'd have to live with it.

"Speaking of which…" Dean checks his watch and stands up. "Thanks so much for your time, Ms. Davis. This has been _really_ helpful. We should get around to doing that inspection now, so we can get out of your, er, hair and let Rod get back to his family. Would you mind showing him the building's fuse box while I head upstairs to the apartment?"

She glances over at Henrik again, eyes narrowed, then nods. "Yeah… I can do that. It's in the basement, we have to go out and around the front to get to it."

Once they're outside, Dean makes a show of fumbling for the keys, and Henrik dutifully steps in to distract her, pointing to the stairs on the left. "Down there, right?"

She nods and passes him by, key in hand, to unlock the deadbolt. "Watch your step, there's a bit of clutter down here."

Grateful for Dean's flashlight, Henrik nods, letting the beam guide him downstairs until he finds the pull cord for the ceiling's lightbulb. He turns it on and glances around… and stops, stymied.

_Clutter_ is an understatement. The basement has clutter the way the Novaks have money. There's furniture, and boxes, and clothing, and linens, and even some stuffed animals scattered about – a lion, a giraffe, a tiger, even what he thinks is a threadbare stuffed Chihuahua curled up like it's sleeping. Eyes flash in the corner when his flashlight passes over them, making him jump, until he realizes it's just the reflection from the eyes of a set of china dolls.

Davis laughs, and Henrik realizes she intentionally let him go down first just to watch his reaction. "Anna's grandkids can't come out to get her stuff until next month, so a few of the neighbors and I moved it all down here. Oliva woulda just thrown it out, but we knew he'd never come down here to find it."

She descends the steps with a smile and inclines her head toward the left wall. "The fuse box is right over there. It's a tight squeeze, but we left a path open between the piles."

Against Henrik's expectations, the fuse box itself is cobweb-free and in good shape. Ignoring Dean's suggestion to just flick the flashlight around, he actually takes the time to look through the fuses – might as well eliminate the obvious mundane explanations for the problems the apartment is apparently experiencing. Everything seems to be in order, though; if there's a short in the wiring, it doesn't originate down here.

When he shuts the cover and turns to leave, Davis has silently moved up right behind him, blocking his exit. _This is it_ , he thinks, tightening his grip on the flashlight. _This is where it turns out she's the killer all along._

She gazes sternly at him. "You know he's exploiting you, right?"

Henrik blinks in confusion. He doesn't even have to try to stay in character as he stammers out, "What?!"

"You're not sporting the bug anywhere, Rod. No bug, no number, no union."

Henrik tries to lower the flashlight unobtrusively, as if he wasn't just preparing to fight for his life with it. The part of his brain that isn't still expecting an attack smugly congratulates itself for having spotted the problems with the electrician disguise. The other half is desperately searching for something to say, since neither of Dean's magic phrases really covers this territory. He settles weakly on, "Bryan's a good guy."

She snorts and raises her eyebrows. "Maybe so, but that don't mean he's not exploiting you anyway. You know that union workers make $10 to $15 more per hour than non-union? If you were union, you'd be getting guaranteed overtime, likely even double time, for coming out on a weekend. And if something happened to you down here, you'd be guaranteed proper compensation."

Henrik coughs, waiting for his heart to stop pounding and trying not to laugh from the absurdity of the situation. "Well…"

Dean's voice drifts down from the top of the stairs. "You done down there, Rod? Come take a look upstairs. We're wasting daylight!"

Davis steps back and gives him another measured glance. "Just think about it, okay?" She shakes her fist and whispers, "Solidarity!" before turning and weaving her way back through the stacks.

He takes another moment to collect himself. The flashlight glints off the glassy eyes of the curled-up stuffed dog. Henrik grumbles a surly, "What're _you_ looking at?" and then stalks off up the stairs after her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And a tip of the hat to Foghat, from whom Dean stole their aliases.


	5. The Proof Is In The Pastelito

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Does it count as grave-robbing if it's just a sidewalk shrine? Henrik isn't sure. Technically, it probably isn't, but morally… "I don't know, Dean." He crosses his arms uncomfortably. "Robbing a shrine seems gauche." Dean raises his eyebrows and snorts. "Yeah, well, so does digging up corpses and setting 'em on fire, but you do what you gotta do to save lives."_

Dean – predictably – finds the whole encounter with the fervent Ms. Davis hilarious. Henrik tells him about it once they are alone together upstairs, and by the time he finishes up with "Solidarity!" the hunter is laughing until he has to grab his side to keep his stitches from aching.

"Baptism by fire," Dean wheezes, still laughing, then claps him on the back. "Luckily for you, it's just the end results that matter in hunting. No one's gonna deduct points for style." He cocks his head thoughtfully. "How hard would it be to stick a union thingy on the badge, anyway?"

Davis wasn't lying about Oliva being barely moved in. The living room features a couch, a pile of boxes and a bean bag chair. The bedroom is barely better – just a futon and a few boxes, half-unpacked. The kitchen has a microwave on the counter next to a box with plastic silverware and paper plates, half of a six-pack of Anchor Steam in the fridge, and a freezer full of frozen dinners. Henrik's seen college dorm rooms that looked more lived in.

Not that he blames Oliva for not wanting to be here. The place is full of dismal little reminders that someone else had lived here for far, far longer. The faded paint on the wall contains clear silhouettes of every picture that had hung there previously, a virtual museum of missing memories. The twin circles on the kitchen's linoleum floor are a sad memorial to years of food dishes for various now-dead pets. And the bathroom still smells of roses, even over the pungent odor of "Dark Temptation" Axe Body Spray.

After the first walk-through, Dean pulls out what looks like a cassette tape player and holds it aloft as he passes from room to room. "EMF meter," he explains casually. "Measures the supernatural activity in an area." The description that follows of exactly _what_ is being measured goes over Henrik's head. What doesn't, however, is that fact that it beeps furiously, red light flashing, whenever Dean brings it near the kitchen and the stairs.

Dean grins at Henrik victoriously. "Called it!"

"So… now we wait?" Dean's imparted a lot of information today; Henrik thinks he is allowed to have not remembered all of it.

Dean shakes his head. "Davis'll get suspicious if we stick around too long. For now, we leave and come back tonight." He frowns at the still-beeping meter and turns it off.

"And then?"

Dean shoves the EMF meter into his coat pocket. "Then you get your proof. If we're unlucky, it'll just be some weird cold spots and flickering lights."

Henrik looks around the desolate apartment, with all its reminders of a life once lived there. It doesn't seem haunted. It just seems… sad. "And if we're lucky?"

Dean winks. "If we're lucky, you'll get to meet the late Mrs. V herself." He does a fast check of the living room, unlocking the windows and checking to make sure they open.

Henrik grimaces. "Meeting a dead woman doesn't sound very lucky."

Dean nods his head. "You're not wrong." He turns to head down the stairs, but Henrik stops him.

"You forgot your briefcase." He glances back at where it's propped up by the archway to the living room.

The hunter smirks. "I know. If we run into anyone later on, it'll be the reason we came back." He turns back to the stairs and starts descending.

Henrik pauses for a moment, impressed at Dean's foresight, and reminds himself that all evidence points to the young man being significantly more competent than his carefree mannerisms would imply.

Back at the Chevy, another thought occurs to him. "Velasquez was cremated, right? So there's no body to salt and burn."

Dean nods as he opens the door and slides behind the wheel. "Yeah. But did you see that locket hanging on her shrine downstairs? There was a lock of hair in it. Dollars to donuts that's her fetter. We light it up and she moves on to that great big condo in the sky."

Does it count as grave-robbing if it's just a sidewalk shrine? Henrik isn't sure. Technically, it probably isn't, but morally… "I don't know, Dean." He crosses his arms uncomfortably. "Robbing a shrine seems gauche."

Dean raises his eyebrows and snorts. "Yeah, well, so does digging up corpses and setting 'em on fire, but you do what you gotta do to save lives. Besides, that's why we've got a stop to make."

~*~

Dean's stop isn't far away – Botanica Yoruba, a Santeria shop run out of the refurbished ground floor of a Victorian house. From the outside, it's easy to overlook, just a handwritten sign above a shadowed garage entryway half-hidden by the verdant green leaves of at least ten plants.

Inside, the store is as vivid as the outside is plain, a cacophony of bright colors, incense and striking artwork. As they enter, a huge, colorful wall painting of the Virgin Mary greets them, surrounded by a number of smaller statues that Henrik can't identify – saints, martyrs, gods, or something else entirely. Things like this are the reason Henrik has a Rolodex full of experts and consultants. The store is entirely outside of his range of expertise.

The walls are covered in low bookshelves containing row after row of glass candles with pictures of saints and prayers glued onto them; above the shelves are paintings and statuettes of religious icons, fierce, half-clad warriors and women in flowing dresses. On the right-hand wall he can see shelves full of what look like spices and incense, all meticulously labeled in a very tiny, precise handwriting, none of which mean anything to Henrik.

Dean's obviously been here before; he sings out a greeting to the two Latina women behind the counter and makes a beeline for the third set of shelves, Henrik trailing behind. After picking up two candles covered in blue-and-white designs with a sprinkling of small yellow stars along the top, he heads over to the incense display for two long sticks that smell vaguely of something light and flowery, but mostly of something that makes Henrik sneeze.

Even if Henrik weren't quite so painfully aware at how much he stands out here, the side glances of the women behind the counter would confirm it. Dean, however, moves with a practiced ease that speaks of a familiarity with these kinds of places, and this place in particular. Henrik's too far away to hear the conversation at the counter, but it involves a significant amount of giggling, a few blushes, and a hushed consultation over Dean's purchases that results in the younger woman retrieving two small golden charms from the altar at the back of the shop while the hunter returns to the incense display for two more sticks. The two trinkets spur a second conversation; it's clear Dean doesn't think they're necessary, but both women just shake their heads at him when he tries to put them back.

"Perdone, caballero." Henrik starts and moves aside as a tiny elderly woman who barely comes past his waist slowly walks into the store with a basket full of roses.

When he looks back up, Dean is counting out a few fives and ones for his small pile of purchases. As she bags them, the older woman adds a plastic-wrapped package of pastelitos to the bag with a flirty wink. "Gratis." Dean shakes his head and rolls his eyes, smiling, then turns and deftly avoids the wizened little rose-seller with a jaunty, "'Scuse me, abuelita!" He pauses, then fishes two dollars out of his pocket to trade for a rose.

On their way back to the car, Dean digs out the plastic-wrapped pair of pastries and then hands the rest of the bag to Henrik. "For the record," he nods towards the bag, plastic crackling as he unwraps the treats, "none of the stuff in there actually _does_ anything."

Dean offers one of the coconut-filled snacks to Henrik, then devours more than half of the other with one big bite. "So good," he croons, mouth full of the sweet Cuban treat. "I swear, no one makes these better than Lupe."

Henrik savors his in significantly smaller bites. "I take it you go there often?"

The hunter stuffs the other half in his mouth, eyes closed momentarily in pleasure. After he swallows, he responds. "Coupla times. Met 'em when I was clearing out a ghost a ways back, so I stop in to check up on things whenever I'm in the area." His smile fades. "My dad never believed in keeping contacts outside of other hunters, but it's kind of nice t' know there's someone out there who'd remember you, y'know, _after_."

Henrik doesn't know what to say to that, so he trusts his instincts and says nothing.

Once they are back in the car and headed to the hotel, Dean perks back up. "So, anyway, the candles and the incense are for us to leave at the shrine in place of the hair and locket. Pay our respects for the dead and all – might make her ghost a little more inclined to be friendly, too. You never know."

Henrik opens the bag and fishes out one of the little plated gold charms the women had pressed on Dean. It's some kind of crucifix with two horizontal bars instead of just the one, and angels at the bottom holding the cross up. "Cruz de Caravaca," the package reads. "The Wishing Cross."

Dean shrugs. "Supposed to bring you protection or luck. Now, I've never had anything actually _react_ to a cross, but Serina was damn insistent. You can stick it in your pocket or something if you want to. A little luck never hurts, right?"

They pull up in front of the hotel, and Henrik asks, "So now what?"

Dean looks at him over the frames of his sunglasses. "It's gonna be a long night tonight, so now, we sleep."

The young hunter easily falls asleep, still clothed, on top of his bed. Henrik, on the other hand, can't even fathom napping right now, as wound up as he is by the afternoon's events.

And it's just as well he doesn't. Half an hour later, he steps outside the hotel room to take a call from Chicago and finds out that Erik, the man he had entrusted all three boys to in Chicago, had prioritized his attention on the twins, thereby unintentionally allowing their boyfriend, Dean's brother, to be hurt.

There's not much Henrik can do remotely, so he calls Marta and lets her know to plan comfort food for tomorrow night when the boys return. There's no point in making a decision about Erik until he gets the full debriefing of the attack on Monday. Even the best bodyguard makes mistakes, and Sam has apparently put in a good word on his account.

He wonders, not for the first time, how anyone could come out of the kind of childhood that Sam has had and still have that much forgiveness and good will. He suspects it has everything to do with his brother.

Said brother is still sleeping soundly when Henrik quietly slips back into the room. He could wake him up with the news, but… what would be the use? There's not much Dean can do remotely either. Henrik makes an executive decision not to tell him, and lies down to try to get some rest.

Surprisingly, he does.

~*~

The alarm goes off at 9:30. While Dean freshens up in the bathroom, Henrik settles down with one of the croissants Dean bought earlier and finally checks his reports. He feels vaguely guilty for reading up on John behind Dean's back, but honestly, this is information he should have looked at the minute he received it.

John Winchester, born 1954, in Normal, Illinois. Moved to Kansas after his father skipped town a few years later. Average grades, leading to a career with the military. Ex-Marine, a veteran with more than a few black spots on his record – insubordinate conduct, a few drunk-on-duties and two charges of assault later pleaded down to lesser conduct – to explain his general rather than honorable discharge. Cleaned up his act in the states; got a job, a wife, two kids and a house in the suburbs, then lost everything except the kids in a house fire. (Faulty wiring, officially, but Jason's left a note saying "investigated for arson, inconclusive???") Tragic, but normal.

After that is where things get... weird. Father gets a post-fire psych eval for claiming his wife was killed by something evil. Cashes out his share of the business, takes the kids and hightails it. The records get spotty after that; odd jobs here and there, a few pick-ups for drunk-and-disorderly, and then he starts to drop off the radar, surfacing occasionally at points that unsurprisingly correlate with times when Dean or Sam registered in schools.

More D-and-Ds and a history of employers citing drinking on the job, poor anger management, or unexplained absences as reasons for termination. The absences, if Dean is to believed, are due to being a family of hunters. And no doubt some of the injuries are, too. But Jason's gone above and beyond and earned himself a bonus for finding a secondary pattern, specifically matching up Mr. Winchester Senior's problems with alcohol with Dean and Sam's absences from school, Dean's "acting out" behavior in class, and most ominously, with Sam's medical history of injuries. During the two months Dean is at juvie, John ends up in the drunk tank and Sam ends up in the hospital with a broken leg. Then, once Dean gets back... nothing.

Henrik's got his answer about what kept Dean at home in the family business after he dropped out, and he doesn't like it.

There's not a lot of information beyond this. Vera's list dovetails with the one she provided on Dean, and becomes pure speculation after that. She's found records of a truck that might be connected to the Impala, but the license plate is never consistent. There are a number of reports of similar vehicles at or near the scene of crimes nationwide, but it's not exactly an unusual vehicle. Hacking into a number of police databases and face recognition software has given her a short list of potential crimes he might have been connected to, but it's all conjecture, and at a few of the scenes there have been reports of two trucks – one driven by a man more or less matching John's description, the other by a black man of similar age possibly acting as his partner. She's still following down leads about cases in Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois.

And then there's the report from Reyes, which is short and to the point: "Without leads, there's not much I can tell you... but behold, I'm fucking awesome at what I do." Apparently, a pickpocket got arrested down in San Diego last week, and among the six wallets on him was one with a credit card for "Bert Aframian," an insurance card for "Elroy McGillicutty," and a driver's license for "John Winchester."

San Diego is far enough away from Palo Alto that it could be a complete coincidence... but close enough to merit concern. He fires off a few emails to the team asking them to keep looking, then pockets his phone, sits back and closes his eyes, trying to put the pieces together.

When he opens them, the clock says 10:38 pm, the room smells of french fries, and Dean is sitting across from him, smirking, with a pile of McDonald's cheeseburgers and two big packets of fries on the table. "You looked like you needed your beauty sleep, so I went ahead and grabbed us dinner." He snags a handful of limp, bedraggled-looking fries and stuffs them in his mouth with gusto. "Eat up! We've got a long night ahead of us."

_McDonald's_.

Henrik's not sure, but he thinks Dean might be putting him through some of this torture intentionally.

~*~

Getting back into the apartment is a lot easier than Henrik was afraid it would be. Dean gives up circling the block to find a spot after about twenty minutes, so they are double-parked with the hazard lights on waiting for a parking spot to open up when they see Ms. Davis exit her apartment. She's traded in her tennis shoes and smock for a pair of heels, hip-hugging jeans and a little black top with a plunging neckline that says she's out for a night on the town.

"Jackpot," Dean whispers. "The floors in these old Victorians aren't that thick. Until she comes back, we don't have to worry about her hearing us walk around."

Henrik tries to sink down in his seat to avoid being seen, but Dean stops him. "Quit worrying so much. She ain't gonna see us. It's night, and our headlights are on. She won't look in our direction, won't want to be blinded."

And… he's not wrong. She walks right past them without even a second glance in their direction and hops on the MUNI that pulls up on the corner not 30 seconds later.

Ten minutes after that, a parking spot opens up not two meters away from the little shrine to Mrs. Velasquez. Dean cackles as he parallel parks the Chevy. "Bam! Front row seats." He tosses a grin at Henrik. "We are on a _roll_. I'm telling ya, it's gonna be a great night!"

While Dean once again gets the apartment door open, Henrik takes out the bag from Botanica Yoruba and sets up the candles, then lights the incense stick off of them and arranges them in a rough semi-circle around the pole. After a muttered apology and a quick look around to make sure no one's watching, he drops the rose in the middle of the incense, then lifts the locket off of the shrine and drops it into his pocket, next to the Caravaca cross from the Santeria shop.

"Got it?" Dean's got the door open and waiting. As it closes behind Henrik with a soft _click_ , a shiver runs down his spine. If Dean is to be believed, he's just locked himself in here with a ghost. He pats his jacket nervously, looking for the bag of salt and the short iron pipe.

_Focus_ , Henrik reminds himself. Even if it is a ghost, he's got the tools to handle it, and an experienced partner who at this point he feels relatively confident is not trying to kill him or having a psychotic break.

Up the stairs. Sweep the apartment for any visible changes. And then…

"What?"

Dean sits down on the couch in the living room. "Honestly? A whole lotta nothing – you'd be amazed how much waiting there is in this gig – but hopefully eventually a little bit of action followed by a little bit of arson."

Henrik rests on an opened box of books and sighs. "You can't just make the ghost appear?" He fishes the locket out of his pants and hands it to Dean, happy to be rid of it.

The young hunter snorts as he pockets the jewelry. "Man, do you know how much easier my life would be if I could just _make_ the monster show up when I was ready for it?" He pulls the EMF meter out of his jacket and lays it on the couch. "Here's our early warning system."

The modified cassette-player- _cum_ -EMF meter stays stubbornly silent.

"Wouldn't it be better to be in the kitchen, where it was going off?" Henrik asks, then follows it up himself with the answer as he realizes, "Oh wait, we wouldn't be able to tell if the ghost was there if we did, would we? It'd just be going off constantly."

Dean smiles broadly, pleased. "You got it! We'll make a hunter of you yet."

Thinking of cheap hotels, fake IDs and McDonald's hamburgers, Henrik feels fairly certain that no, they won't.

~*~

Time passes.

Henrik is a professional. Professionals don't get bored on the job. Professionals are always alert and aware of their surroundings, to prevent threats to their clients.

If he repeats that to himself enough times, he might even believe it.

Although one of the differences between being a bodyguard and being a hunter is apparently the presence of credible threats. Sitting in semi-darkness waiting for a machine to beep is not like managing a squad of men to prevent a kidnapping situation while your employer is in Buenos Aires for a convention.

Here, technically, the only body he's guarding is his own. And Dean, of course, but if Henrik hasn't somehow gotten suckered in to a shared delusion, Dean is the senior operative on site. And _Dean_ doesn't seem to be getting bored.

If Dean can sit it out, Henrik can sit it out.

~*~

No, he can't.

It doesn't take long, maybe 10 minutes more, before the lure of conversation and movement far outweighs the boredom of sitting and waiting for a thing that may or may not appear. It's one thing to stay on guard when you expect a threat; but no matter how much he may be inclined to believe Dean's stories at this point, his body just can't work up the adrenaline to keep his senses sharp for an alleged ghost.

It's a slight consolation to Henrik that Dean cracks before he does, but he recognizes that it's mostly due to the fact that the young hunter probably had no idea that there was any kind of competition going on. He has no doubt that Dean is perfectly capable of stubbornly digging in his heels when challenged.

As it is, he's more than a little grateful when Dean breaks the silence. "Real glamorous life, huh? Nothing but non-stop action and rock-star levels of groupies."

Henrik pauses before responding. There's a note of insecurity in the hunter's voice he hadn't expected. _Dean's betting everything on this proof_ , he realizes. _This is him looking for a place in Sam's world._

He wonders when the last time was that Dean heard any positive validation about his choice of occupation. That said, he's not about to feed him lies.

After a few more moments, he settles on, "I'm reserving judgement until I see the undead killer grandma you promised me." He pauses, then adds. "And I'm expecting better special effects than that X-Files movie."

Dean laughs, and the mood is broken. He shifts into a more comfortable position and says, "You know, you've got me at a disadvantage here. You know all about what I do, but I've only got bad thrillers and summer blockbusters to base my assumptions about what you do off of."

Which is how they spend the next hour, Henrik sharing some of his war stories with Dean – some details omitted, of course. It's… fun. Dean asks the right kinds of questions that say he's actually thinking critically about the events and how he would have handled them. He's untrained and comes at security issues from absolutely the opposite side of the fence, but Henrik thinks if circumstances were different, Dean would actually have made a very good operative.

Different circumstances in this case meaning not being romantically involved with any of the assignments… let alone all of them.

The conversation naturally dovetails into Henrik's experiences since the twins came to Stanford, then lapses into a slightly strained silence. A quick glance over at Dean and it's clear that there's something on his mind that he doesn't know how to ask. But Henrik's a patient man. He makes a show of checking his phone and then settles back comfortably, keeping his body language open and accessible.

Across the way, Dean pulls his leg up onto the couch, resting his chin on his knee. He stares pensively into the darkness for a minute as if deliberating something, then, mind apparently made up, cocks his head and runs his fingers through his hair in a nervous tell.

"So…" he begins, fingers drumming on the couch arm. "I gotta ask you, and you totally don't have to answer, but, y'know – and I'm not asking you to say anything about Cas 'n Jimmy, but... me and Sam, being brothers and all... you _really_ don't care?"

There's a fine line to tread here. It's extremely unprofessional to discuss your employers' private lives under any circumstances, let alone the private lives of a family as unconventional and influential as the Novaks. On the other hand, not saying anything at a key moment like this could unintentionally damage those same private lives.

Henrik looks down the darkened hall, then back at Dean thoughtfully, trying to make sure he gives enough weight to his answer. "I can't say I _understand_ the attraction you feel to each other," he ignores Dean's snort and keeps going, "but then again, I don't _need_ to. My job is to make sure Castiel and James stay safe and unthreatened by physical or social predators. It's not to judge who they love or how they express it in the way they live their lives, simply to make sure they get to live those lives unaffected by those who would seek to control them for it."

Dean looks down and away at the floor. "That's, uh... more open-minded than I expected. I wish more people felt like you do." He coughs. "Hell, half the time _I_ don't feel like you do."

Henrik turns and catches Dean's gaze, making a point of holding it. "People fear what they don't understand and what sets them apart." Henrik has actually thought a great deal about this; he's had to have this particular discussion with every single member of the Novak security team. "That's why so many kings practiced it, you know. It put them closer to the gods and set them above the laws of the common man. The kind of love you share has historically been the provenance of gods and outlaws."

The young hunter snorts. "Well, if Cas and Jimmy are the gods, I guess that makes Sam 'n me the outlaws."

"It would seem appropriate." Henrik smiles slightly.

Dean drops his flashlight into his lap and runs his fingers around the edge of his boot distractedly. "I used to know there was something wrong in me, y'know, wanting something I should never want to have, no matter how much I buried it." He chews at his lip, eyes downcast in the flashlight's soft glow.

"So I let Sam go, knowing it was best for him – he wanted safe, and normal, and I couldn't give him either. But then it turned out I couldn't let him go, so I went to Stanford after him, only to find out that whatever was wrong in me was wrong in him too." He gives a short, dark laugh. "And not only is he more than willing to give me that thing I shouldn't even want to ask for, but he's managed to find the two other guys at Stanford who have already been having it for years. And _none_ of you seem to think it's wrong. It don't make sense."

Henrik nods gently. "Just because people fear or fail to understand something doesn't mean that it's wrong. To me, it's always seemed to me that asking _why_ something exists is much less productive than asking whether its existence does any harm. Any number of factors could have contributed to the way you feel. Growing up in isolation. Needing to feel understood. Needing to feel loved unconditionally. Needing someone who can understand and accept the difficult and hidden parts of yourself. Being raised in a situation that repeatedly puts you outside of the constraints of normal society and its rules. Being raised in a situation where laws are simply obstacles to be circumvented. Or perhaps, as some would believe, some people are just destined to be soulmates."

Dean shoots him an inscrutable glance. "You talking about me and Sam, there, or Cas and Jimmy?"

"Is there really much difference?" Henrik asks pointedly. "It makes them happy. It makes you happy. It does no harm." He shrugs, staring at the streetlight through the window. "It is against conventional law, but gods and outlaws have never been constrained by that, have they? And should a situation arise, I am authorized to invoke more than sufficient steps to satisfactorily contain the situation. So beyond that, no, I really _don't_ care."

"Huh." Dean sits there, staring into the darkness as he thinks. Then, conversation clearly closed, he abruptly stands up and makes a big show of stretching his shoulders. "Man, I don't know about you, but my legs are about to fall asleep."

The kitchen really isn't much more interesting than the living room, but at least it's a change of scenery. There's no outside windows to worry about here, so Dean flips the light switch and begins to explore, from counter to counter around as he reexamines the cabinets and cupboards he cursorily checked over earlier that day.

"Hmmm." He squats down and opens the cabinet beneath the sink. "Well, well, well! Look what we have here."

Henrik sits at attention as Dean fishes a pen out of his pocket and pokes curiously at whatever has caught his eye. Immediately, a loud and unexpected sharp series of snaps like firecrackers erupts. The noise sends the bodyguard flying back out of his seat, muscle memory automatically slamming himself into a ready stance, his back against the wall, iron pipe in hand.

Then Dean turns around, brandishing the mousetrap that has closed on his pen with a grin. "Looks like Oliva thought he had some kind of rodent problems. He had something like ten of those set up under the sink. Trust me, you do _not_ want any of these babies set to go off with a ghost in the house. Man, there was this poltergeist out east in Harlan County…" His words trail off as his eyes widen to see Henrik standing there, pipe raised to strike.

"Uh… stand down, soldier." Dean takes a step back as Henrik sheepishly lowers the weapon. "Sorry about that. Shoulda warned you." He twirls the mousetrapped pen in his fingers with a snicker. "Nice reflexes, though, man."

Henrik secures the pipe again in his jacket. Clearly this night has him more on edge than he thought. He takes a deep breath and wills his blood to stop racing.

The young hunter finishes examining the cabinets and then moves on to the fridge and freezer. He emerges from behind the freezer door with a sound of triumph and a box of pepperoni Hot Pockets, immediately unwrapping two and gleefully popping them in the microwave on the counter.

He freezes at Henrik's scowl. "What?" he shrugs. "No one else is gonna eat 'em. They'd just get thrown out, and the way I grew up, you don't let food go to waste. Eating these is practically a public service."

Henrik rolls his eyes. Then he shivers – the apartment's residual heat must finally be cooling off, or maybe it's just his body catching up with the aftereffects of that unexpected adrenaline rush.

Suddenly, the lights flicker and something sparks in the microwave. Dean's on it instantly, pulling the plug out of the wall. An iron pipe seemingly materializes in his hand as he straightens up, glancing around.

"Henrik, I need you to get your salt out and come stand by me, okay?" He's speaking quietly, like he doesn't quite expect the bodyguard to obey.

Henrik's teeth are chattering now – somehow the room's managed to become even chillier. A part of his brain reminds him distantly about what Dean said about ghosts and the cold, but he didn't think it would be like _this_. He fumbles his suddenly stiff fingers into his pocket, locates the baggie of salt, and pulls it out.

He feels ridiculous.

"Okay," Dean says. "I'm going to move slowly in the direction of the stairway, and I want you to follow me. Keep the pipe where you can get to it quickly, but keep your hand free. We know at least one person has died from falling down the stairs, so you need to be able to catch yourself in case that's her big M.O."

Henrik falls in line easily behind Dean. This is his show; Henrik's more than willing to let him take the lead.

The hallway is even frostier than the kitchen. It had been perfectly normal just a few minutes ago when they'd walked down it, but now he'd bet it wasn't much above 40 degrees.

"Keep your back to the wall," Dean instructs.

Henrik is glad to oblige, positioning himself at the top of the stairs, where he can see the hallway and stairs equally. Dean stays in the hallway, walking carefully down the hall toward the living room. He swings the flashlight left and right, beam flickering for anything out of the ordinary.

Henrik tears his eyes away from Dean long enough to glance back towards the kitchen –

And there she is.

~*~

She glows like there's moonlight shining through her.

That's the first thought that enters his mind when his brain finally reboots itself. She's standing in the hallway, a tiny little woman, shoulders stooped from osteoporosis, translucent skin stretched tight over tiny bird-like bones. She's wearing a full-length tea dress with roses on it, the same one he saw her wearing in that photo with her family, it must have been her favorite or something. And she's standing right in front of him, but he can see the walls through her, and she's glowing like there's moonlight shining through.

"Dean–" he says, but it comes out less like a whisper and more like a squeak, and the hunter has his back to him.

And she's not _looking_ at Henrik, but she's looking for _something_ , and her arms are out and coming toward him –

He tries to remember anything Dean told him about ghosts, but it's gone out of his head right now, along with every inch of self-preservation because that's a ghost, and if ghosts are real he should be _running_ , but there's a reason he's not running, because–

Then there's a sound like sand skittering across wood, and she flickers and vanishes. It's Dean, standing next to him with an open container of salt and a smug but alert expression. _There's your proof_ , it says wordlessly, _and how do you like THEM apples?_

And Henrik opens his mouth to tell Dean something, anything about what he just saw, about the fact that he just saw an honest-to-god _ghost,_ but what comes out instead is–

_"How on earth did a woman that old go up and down those stairs every day?"_

Dean stares at him, and then leans back with a full-out belly laugh. "I show you a real, live ghost and _that's_ your question?"

Henrik allows himself a chuckle. "I think it's a valid question." He hefts his salt into a more hopefully aerodynamic position. "So. Ghosts are real and I just saw one. Now what?"

Next to him, Dean's got the pipe under one arm as he fumbles in his jacket and pulls out the locket. "Now we send her on her way."

He moves quickly back into the kitchen and places the salt carton on the counter next to the sink. "Cover me."

Henrik stands to one side of Dean, salt at the ready, as the hunter pops the locket open and places it in the sink. As the air chills around them, he pours the salt over the locket, then pulls out a bottle of accelerant and sprinkles it over the salt.

When the old lady again coalesces in the hall, Henrik is ready for her. She doesn't look angry to see him, just… confused. He's got the salt out as she comes toward him, but before she gets in range, she just stops and looks around. Then she turns her back to him and drifts back into the hallway.

Behind him, he hears Dean strike the match. A few seconds later, the stench of burning hair reaches him.

The apparition is still there, a growing expression of distress on her face as she glances anxiously around her.

Henrik gropes for Dean's shoulder and taps on it, keeping his eyes firmly on the translucent figure in front of him. "How do we know when she's moved on?"

Dean groans. "You've gotta be kidding me." He turns around and sighs heavily.

Henrik glances over at the hunter. He doesn't look scared – he just looks grumpy. "Was something supposed to happen?"

"Yes, something was supposed to happen," Dean snarks. "She was _supposed_ to go up in flames as her spirit moved on to the next wherever."

In the hallway, Mrs. Velasquez turns as if to head towards the bedroom, then flickers and vanishes.

"What do we do now?" Henrik whispers. How good is a ghost's hearing, anyway? Is there a point to whispering in the first place? He looks to Dean for instruction.

The hunter scowls. "We leave. That's what we do."

"What?!" Henrik resumes his defensive position at the top of the stairs as Dean heads to the living room and collects the briefcase and EMF meter. "But… she's still floating around up here someplace. We can't just leave the apartment like this!"

"Gonna need to do more research before I come back here." Dean drops the EMF meter in the briefcase, along with the charred locket. "Did you see the way she was looking around? She's missing something – probably whatever's keeping her here. We just have to figure out what it is." Then he brightens. " Wait – you said there was a lot of her stuff in the basement, right? Let's check it out first, see if any of it triggers the EMF."

Which of course is when the ghost reappears directly behind Dean, hands reaching out to touch him.

"Look out!" Henrik yells, flinging his salt at her. Dean spins around, swinging his pipe wildly. The figure ripples and blinks out as the iron passes through it, then reappears again on the hunter's other side.

"Head downstairs! I'll be right behind you." The hunter swings his pipe again. "Go! We're just wasting time up here."

Reluctantly, Henrik turns to the darkened stairs… just in time to see a pair of horrifying glowing eyes rushing up the steps at him. Dean is yelling something, but he can't quite make it out through the ferocious snarling and snapping noises that accompanies the small, demonic monster rushing towards him.

Instinctively, he leaps backwards – right into Mrs. Velasquez's ghostly hands. His lungs gasp for air as an icy, arctic cold pierces them. When he glances down, he can see her fingers protruding from his chest.

_Her fingers are protruding from his chest._

Then her hand vanishes as he jerks forward, twisting sideways to avoid the snarling eyes that are leaping up at him.

His foot comes down on air.

Suddenly he is falling, grasping at the walls as he careens down two stairs, half-somersaulting into the railing. Dean grabs his shirt, but instead of stabilizing him, it has the opposite effect, pulling the hunter over the handrail.

Dean lets Henrik go as he grabs for the banister with both arms, catching himself before he can fall further. The salt canister in his hands goes flying over Henrik's head down the stairs, while Dean's foot nails him in the back, propelling him into the railing.

It doesn't feel like it at the moment, but it's actually a good thing. Henrik's head hits the wall behind the railing with a crack and his back aches. Then a sharp burning pain in his thigh pulls him out of his daze, and his hand shoots out almost reflexively and wraps around Dean's calf. His shoulder takes the full brunt of his halted momentum with a painful jolt, but he manages to yank himself to a stop.

Henrik's head hurts. Again. But he's alive.

…and still in danger. He hears the high-pitched growl of the monster a step or two above him and opens his eyes to find himself staring directly into the glowing eyes of a ferocious, translucent… _Chihuahua_.

Small flecks of ethereal spittle go flying from its jaw as it shakes its head and hops up and down, barking frenetically at him. Henrik lets go of Dean's leg to sit on the stairs and scoots himself a few steps further away from the beast, steadfastly ignoring the fact that he nearly died to an undead Chihuahua. He can see Dean through the discorporate menace, which looks weirdly familiar to him. He's seen it before, maybe? One of the pictures on the shrine? He searches his memory, keeping one eye firmly on the angrily barking specter as it hops back and forth, defending its step.

_The basement._

Henrik looks up in excitement. "I know what we have to burn!"

Dean drops himself down onto the stairs, swinging his pipe through the ghostly dog. "Great, that makes one of us. Where are we going?"

Despite the absolute absurdity of the situation, Henrik feels his excitement growing. "You were right – it's in the basement." He grunts as he forces his wobbly feet into action as he stands up, one hand firmly wrapped around the railing for support.

Dean faces up the stairs at Mrs. Velasquez, whose face has gone from confused to angry. Apparently ghostly old ladies don't like it when their ghostly dogs get threatened. "Go for it – I'll keep granny here occupied."

It's not a graceful retreat; more of a frantic stagger, really. Mentally calculating how much force he'll need to break the basement lock open, Henrik barrels out the front door…

…And directly into a slightly inebriated Mr. Weimar, who is standing there with his keys out, wearing the confused expression of a man who has no idea what is going on but knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he isn't going to like the explanation.

Henrik looks at Mr. Weimar.

Then at his keys.

Then back at Mr. Weimar.

Henrik licks his lips and takes a deep breath. "It's okay," he says, trying to sound reassuring. "I'm supposed to be here."

"Oh," says Mr. Weimar, nodding approvingly and visibly relaxing. "Well. That's okay, then."

It takes all of Henrik's years of professionalism to keep his face straight at that.

He looks at Weimar's keys again and decides to go for broke. "Say, I need to check the fuse box in the basement. Could I borrow those for a minute?" He shuts the apartment door lightly just as Dean begins to curse on the stairs.

Weimar's brow furrows again, obviously deliberating with himself. "Sure, let me, uh, just let myself in here–" he manages to unlock his door on the third try, then drops the keyring into Henrik's hand. "Just, I dunno, put 'em inside the door here when you're done." He looks nervously at the direction of Dean's muffled swearing and slips inside his apartment, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Henrik blinks. That actually _worked_.

Then he shakes his head and remembers the mission.

Keys. Basement. _Flashlight_.

The horrible stuffed toy is exactly where he saw it last. No, not a toy.

Henrik picks it up with a grimace, holding it at arm's length and trying not to think about the leathery skin he can feel under its thinning, coarse hair. Its glassy taxidermied gaze bores into him until he turns it to face away from him.

Not a toy at all.

He reaches in his pocket for the salt, only to realize belatedly that he threw it all trying to defend Dean in the hallway. Besides, there's not really any place down here to torch it. There's always the street, of course… but that would probably get them arrested on a charge of animal cruelty before the flames were even lit.

Right. Back to Dean it is.

It seems a little rude, unnecessarily cruel even, to plan on using the dead woman's kitchen sink to set her dog on fire, but right now Henrik doesn't care. There is nothing on earth that is going to stop him from sending that dog on to its unearthly rewards – not even said dog itself, which appears at the top of the basement steps as he nears, muzzle flecked with a fine white froth as it snarls and growls.

_What the hell_ , he thinks, _why not_? He forces a grin on his face as he stashes the dog's stuffed corpse under one arm so he can pull out his iron pipe. Then he whistles, waggling the pipe back and forth. "Here boy!"

The dog stops growling and cocks its head, panting a little.

With a grin, he throws the rod towards the back of the room. "Fetch!"

The incorporeal dog launches itself after the rod with a yip. Henrik in turn launches himself up the stairs – well, launch might be a bit of an overstatement. Hobbles with feeling, maybe.

He glances back into the room long enough to see the ghost try to pick up the rod and discorporate, then reappear and start barking at it.

Then he's off to the apartment upstairs. Up on the landing, Dean raises his hand, and Henrik tosses the dog's corpse into his arms. Dean's expression is priceless; his eyes bug out and for a moment Henrik thinks he's going to throw it down the hall away from him in revulsion. Fortunately for both of them, he thinks better and holds onto it with a disgusted, "That's fucked, man! Ew!"

By the time Henrik reaches the top of the stairs, Dean's got the dog in the sink and is looking frantically through his pockets. When Henrik appears, he grins in relief. "Dude, I need your salt – I can't find mine."

Henrik shakes his head apologetically. "I already used mine." He turns back and scans the hallway, then groans. "I'm pretty sure yours is at the bottom of the stairs."

"I got this." Dean presses past Henrik, who is more than happy to let someone else take the stairs this time. "Keep your pipe ready. I kinda pissed Mrs. V off while you were gone."

Pipe. Right. "About that, Dean–" but the hunter is already out of sight, down the stairs.

Which means, like clockwork, it's time for the old lady to reappear.

Dean's pipe sweeps through her before she can reach him. "About what? You lose the pipe?" He tosses the canister of salt at Henrik.

"Long story." Henrik shrugs, pouring the salt over the dog. _How much salt is enough?_ Better safe than sorry, he decides, pouring out more than half the canister's contents over the body.

Dean tosses him the pipe, trading positions. Henrik goes on point while the hunter locates and pours out the remainder of his accelerant. Before he can light a match, Henrik's eyes widen. "Fire alarm!" he hisses. The burnt hair might not have set it off before, but there's no way taxidermied dog flambé won't.

They both scan the ceiling. "Above you!" Dean points out.

Henrik will admit that whacking the alarm with the pipe until it falls off its mount is not the most elegant way he could have handled it. But frankly, he doesn't care. He pries open the battery compartment and pulls them out. Elegant or not, it got the job done.

He turns around to see Dean nodding approvingly, match in hand.

And behind the hunter – _again_ – is the now furious-looking ghost of the old woman.

"Duck!" Without thinking, he throws the pipe. It flies past Dean, straight through her, and she flickers out.

Dean lights the match.

The ghost of Anna Velasquez blinks into existence again in the hallway. Next to her, the ghost of her Chihuahua manifests, yipping and dancing about for attention.

The match falls into the sink.

In the hallway, Mrs. Velasquez's dog leaps into her arms, and she smiles down at it as it licks her face.

In the sink, the corpse smolders for a second, then blazes up. A seconds later, the pair of ghosts in front of them burst into flames and then vanish.

"And that," Dean says smugly as he limps over to him, and for the first time Henrik notices guiltily that Dean is favoring the leg he grabbed hold of on the stairwell, "is what was _supposed_ to happen with the locket."

The reek of burning dog hair begins to fill the air. It smells like victory.

Henrik leans against the wall and watches the flames. When he puts his hands in his pockets, his fingers accidentally brush over the area where the strange burning feeling woke him out of his daze on the stairs. He pulls out the cross from the Santeria shop. The metal is still warm.

"So what do you think," Dean asks a minute later. "Was that proof enough for you, or do we gotta do this all over again?"

Henrik bursts out laughing at that. Dean joins right in.

~*~

Cleaning up after themselves is disgusting, but efficient.

Henrik opens the living room windows to air out the apartment while Dean extinguishes the dog's charred corpse and wraps it up in a plastic garbage bag, washing his hands no less than three times afterwards to make sure no trace of the corpse remains. Henrik decides to see to its complete cremation once they return to San Jose. Dean assures him that its ghost has long moved on. Henrik thinks about those horrible glowing eyes charging up the stairs at him and argues that it never hurts to be thorough.

They hobble down to the street like injured but triumphant veterans returning from war. Henrik has the plastic bag hefted over his good shoulder. Dean's carrying the briefcase (all the salt and pipes safely stashed inside) in one hand while he eats his pilfered Hot Pocket with the other.

Henrik breathes a sigh of relief when everything is locked safely away in the trunk, and realizes that he is grinning like an idiot. It's been a while since he felt so alive. Not that he'd want to do this thing every day, or even occasionally, but… they did something good tonight.

As Dean locks up the basement and drops Weimar's (Wiener's) keys off, Henrik steps over to the curb and returns the slightly melted locket to the shrine. The silver glints off the streetlight through the burnt streaks across it.

Then Dean's calling him from the car. He stands and turns up to go, then returns to the shrine one last time.

When the Impala pulls away from the curb, the light from its headlights glints off the little gold-plated cross that now sits next to the locket.

~*~

By unspoken accord, they check out of the hotel and drive back down to Palo Alto that night. There's no way Henrik is sleeping another night on that lumpy mattress when he has a soft king bed waiting at home. While they are en route, he wakes Marta up to arrange for Dr. Joules to return to the house first thing in the morning to look them both over.

After he hangs up, he looks over at Dean. "Monday," he says. "Draw up your suggestions for protecting the house, and we'll see what can be done."

Dean's smile at that is the widest he's seen yet.

~*~

When they arrive back at the house at almost 2:30 a.m., the lights are on and the household is awake. Marta, it seems, has taken it upon herself to decide that their seeing Dr. Joules should not wait until morning. When they walk into the kitchen, she and the doctor are sitting there, sharing some freshly brewed coffee over pieces of pecan pie, with an identical frown of disapproval on each of their faces. The scowls deepen ever further when they take in the extent of their disheveled appearances.

Henrik knows exactly how displeased Marta is with them when she refuses to let either of them near the pie until the doctor has finished his examinations.

The doctor is also not pleased with Henrik or Dean, and not just because he has been dragged from bed at far too early an hour.

He patches Henrik up first – a lot of scrapes and bruises, a strained shoulder that really _should_ be in a sling if the bodyguard knows what is good for him, and what is most likely a very mild concussion.

Dean, on the other hand, has popped not one but nineteen of his stitches, undoubtedly from dangling over the banister with Henrik's additional weight pulling him down. He's also added a few new bruises to his collection; fortunately (from the perspective of Henrik and Dean, but decidedly _not_ the doctor), most of those are in places where he was already bruised. And then there's the matter of not taking his medicine as prescribed.

Dr. Joules is pleased least of all with the fact that _neither_ of them will explain how they acquired _any_ of their injuries.

"It's a long story," Henrik says. "And confidential."

"And boring," Dean adds, his eyes already glazed from the painkillers that the doctor had insisted he resume taking as soon as the examination was complete. "You wouldn't enjoy it, even if we _could_ tell ya." He glances at Henrik and grins loopily. "Which we can't."

Henrik nods. "Confidential." Then he winces, wishing he hadn't nodded, as his head aches at the movement.

The doctor scowls at them both. "Let me guess," he says, his voice dripping with tired sarcasm. "You had a fight with another 'big dog.'"

Henrik exchanges an amused look with Dean.

He glances at the doctor.

Then back at Dean.

Then back at the doctor.

"No, sir," Henrik says with a completely straight face. "This was a _much_ smaller dog."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, finally finished, almost 23K longer than I'd originally planned to write. If you enjoyed reading about Henrik, I suspect there will be another story about him along sooner or later - in the wake of everything that happened in the wake of [Chapter 30](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5661583/chapters/15184438) of _Sammy's Time at Stanford_ , he seems determined to find time to have a long talk with Bobby...
> 
> ...and thanks again to ZoyciteM for forgiving me for throwing her characters down the stairs!


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